Abstract
Urban agriculture is making an increasing contribution to food security in large cities around the world. The potential contribution of biodiversity to ecological intensification in urban agricultural systems has not been investigated. We present monitoring data collected from rice fields in 34 community farms in mega-urban Shanghai, China, from 2001 to 2015, and show that the presence of a border crop of soybeans and neighboring crops (maize, eggplant and Chinese cabbage), both without weed control, increased invertebrate predator abundance, decreased the abundance of pests and dependence on insecticides, and increased grain yield and economic profits. Two 2 year randomized experiments with the low and high diversity practices in the same locations confirmed these results. Our study shows that diversifying farming practices can make an important contribution to ecological intensification and the sustainable use of associated ecosystem services in an urban ecosystem.
Highlights
Over the last century, global biodiversity loss and species extinction have occurred at an unprecedented rate (Barlow et al, 2016), and agricultural intensification has been one of the major drivers (Tscharntke et al, 2005; Gonthier et al, 2014)
We present monitoring data collected from rice fields in 34 community farms in mega-urban Shanghai, China, from 2001 to 2015, and show that the presence of a border crop of soybeans and neighboring crops, both without weed control, increased invertebrate predator abundance, decreased the abundance of pests and dependence on insecticides, and increased grain yield and economic profits
Our study shows that diversifying farming practices can make an important contribution to ecological intensification and the sustainable use of associated ecosystem services in an urban ecosystem
Summary
Global biodiversity loss and species extinction have occurred at an unprecedented rate (Barlow et al, 2016), and agricultural intensification has been one of the major drivers (Tscharntke et al, 2005; Gonthier et al, 2014). One of the features of agricultural intensification is the striking change in land use, in which complex natural ecosystems have been converted to monocultural crop production ecosystems (Tscharntke et al, 2005). This agricultural intensification has multiple consequences for ecosystems, including a decline in natural biocontrol services (Symondson et al, 2002), disruption of crop pollination (Kremen et al, 2012; KovacsHostyanszki et al, 2017) and extensive damage to naturally-occurring species and the environment. The goals are to achieve more sustainable crop production (Bommarco et al, 2013), increase food security, and improve the quality of agricultural products (Martin-Guay et al, 2018)
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