Biodiversity in intensive agriculture

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - A study with BOKU participation shows that biodiversity in intensive agriculture is not economically profitable for farmers. Measures for more sustainable agriculture can increase the number and diversity of wild bee species in grassland and thus increase pollination and crop yields in neighboring fields. However, this does not pay off economically in intensive agriculture, scientists show in the scientific journal "PNAS" using the example of sunflowers . Implementing biodiversity-friendly practices in agriculture can protect biodiversity while increasing production, writes a team of researchers led by Jeroen Scheper of Wageningen University (Netherlands). But the economic profitability of these measures is unclear, they say, which is why farmers tend to be hesitant. And not without good reason, because at least for crops in intensively managed agricultural landscapes, for which pollination is only moderately important, it does not pay off. For the study, which also involved Jochen Kantelhardt from the Institute of Agricultural and Forestry Economics at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (Boku) Vienna and Stefan Kirchweger from the STUDIA research facility in Schlierbach (OÃ), 21 grassland plots in southwestern France bordering sunflower fields were investigated.