Management for sustainable use — conservation farming: evaluating the overall benefits of landuse options for people and the environment

Abstract

Many terrestrial landscapes are managed as farming systems but there is an increasing need for these systems to fulfil functions that are not directly related to agriculture. Agricultural production must be balanced against the need to maintain healthy ecosystems that can provide a variety of goods and services necessary for human wellbeing. Achieving this balance poses a significant challenge to modern societies and requires the integration of ecological, economic, and social issues. There are many exciting and ground-breaking projects underway to address this problem and the papers in this session present some of the advances that have been made in recent years. The context for the session is provided by two overview papers. The first paper discusses the complexity of dealing with ecological, economic and social factors in farm landscapes, based on the experience of a three year study of conservation farming in South Africa. The second paper provides insights from a large multi-dimensional study of ecosystem services in Australia. The overview is followed by a series of case studies, which focus on different landscapes and different approaches to the measurement and evaluation of economic, social, and ecological factors related to integrated land use. The case studies are derived from projects in India, New Zealand and South Africa. Finally, integration of different needs will only occur if information from multidisciplinary sources is processed and presented in a meaningful way so that it can influence decision-making and land use policy. Examples of integration and analysis are dealt with in the last two papers from this session, one dealing with the outcomes of the study of conservation farming in South Africa and the second dealing with conflicts between wildlife conservation and cattle farming in Kenya.