Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Biodiversity

Agricultural biodiversity encompasses the variety and variability of living organisms that contribute to food production, including crops, livestock, soil biota and associated wild species. Ecosystem services arising from this biodiversity are the benefits that people derive from agroecosystems, such as pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil formation and water regulation. These services underpin agricultural productivity, resilience to environmental change and the long‐term sustainability of food systems. Their provision depends on the composition and configuration of farmed landscapes, management intensity and the surrounding natural habitats, with complex synergies and trade-offs determining overall system multifunctionality. Recognising and quantifying these services are central to designing farming practices that reconcile production goals with conservation objectives.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have highlighted the context-dependent nature of land-use decisions on biodiversity outcomes, showing that neither crop expansion nor yield intensification consistently delivers superior conservation benefits across regions and production systems. Modelling at global scales reveals that species richness, abundance and community homogenisation respond variably to yield gains versus area conversion, emphasising the need for region-specific balances between intensification and spatial planning. Complementary interdisciplinary work in tropical smallholder landscapes has demonstrated pervasive trade-offs between ecosystem multifunctionality and farm profitability: transitions to high-yield monocultures invariably boost economic returns but erode multiple ecological functions. Landscape compositions that integrate diverse crop and non-crop habitats can mitigate some of these trade-offs, although intensive monocultures remain the most profitable.

Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Biodiversity publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in ecosystem services in agricultural biodiversity across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Ecosystem services: The suite of provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural benefits that humans obtain from ecosystems.

Agricultural biodiversity: The diversity of organisms used for food and agriculture, including genetic resources, species and ecosystems.

Biotic homogenization: The process by which species assemblages become more similar over time, often due to the loss of specialists and spread of generalists.

Ecosystem multifunctionality: The capacity of an ecosystem to sustain multiple functions and services simultaneously, such as nutrient cycling, pest regulation and carbon storage.

References

1. Geography and availability of natural habitat determine whether cropland intensification or expansion is more detrimental to biodiversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution (2025).
2. Trade-offs between multifunctionality and profit in tropical smallholder landscapes. Nature Communications (2020).
3. Contrasting effects of bioenergy crops on biodiversity. Science Advances (2023).
4. Climate influences broadly, landscape influences narrowly: Implications for agricultural beneficial insects. The Science of The Total Environment (2025).