Experimental Assessment of Ecosystem Services in Agriculture

Abstract

Ecosystem services (ES) in agriculture are vital for the supply of food and fibre. However, the provision of some of the ES by these ecosystems has traditionally been considered to be at a low level. Earlier studies attributed very low values of ES to farmland world-wide per annum but the authors recognize that this was a severe underestimate because of the paucity of data available at the time. These assessments were based on published studies that used ‘value transfer’ techniques, supported by a few original calculations. In contrast to these studies, the current work proposes a framework and a ‘ bottom-up’ approach to asses ES experimentally at field level. It elaborates on the conceptual framework of ES in agroecosystems providing field-scale assessments, citing examples from Denmark and New Zealand. This work demonstrates that there is a very wide range of ES provision, with organic arable cropping delivering many times the ES value of that provided by conventional farming. This study also provides scenarios for balancing production and ES in agroecosystems that can be explored to maintain and improve farm sustainability and achieve food security.