Abstract
Scientific and policy interest in the biological diversity of agriculture (agrobiodiversity) is expanding amid global socioeconomic and environmental changes and sustainability interests. The majority of global agrobiodiversity is produced in smallholder food-growing. We use meta-analyses in an integrated framework to examine the interactions of smallholder agrobiodiversity with: (1) livelihood processes, especially migration, including impacts on agrobiodiversity as well as the interconnected resource systems of soil, water, and uncultivated habitats; and (2) plant-soil ecological systems. We hypothesize these interactions depend on: (1) scope of livelihood diversification and type resource system; and (2) plant residues and above-/belowground component ecological specificity. Findings show: (1) livelihood diversification is linked to varied environmental factors that range from rampant degradation to enhancing sustainability; and (2) significant ecological coupling of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity (AGSOBIO assemblages). The environmental impacts of livelihood interactions correspond to variation of diversification (migration, on-farm diversification) and resource system (i.e., agrobiodiversity per se, soil, water). Our findings also reveal mutually dependent interactions of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity. Results identify livelihood diversification-induced reduction of environmental resource quality with lagged agrobiodiversity declines as a potentially major avenue of global change. Our contribution re-frames livelihood interactions to include both agrobiodiversity and ecological systems. We discuss this integrated social-environmental re-framing through the proposed spatial geographic schema of regional agri-food spaces with distinctive matrices of livelihood strategies and relations to biodiversity and resources. This re-framing can be used to integrate livelihood, agrobiodiversity, and ecological analysis and to guide policy and scientific approaches for sustainability in agriculture and food-growing.
Highlights
Integrating the Analysis of Livelihoods, Agrobiodiversity, and Ecological InteractionsScience and policy increasingly recognize biodiversity as central to land-use and agri-food systems amid global-scale changes that are socioeconomic and environmental [1,2]
The studies surveyed here and the perspective of our research urge that the increased amount of attention to livelihood-diversification processes view these phenomena as both cause and effect in relation to environmental change
At least three hypothesized mechanisms underlie the linkages of livelihood diversification to environmental impacts (Figure 2a)
Summary
Science and policy increasingly recognize biodiversity as central to land-use and agri-food systems amid global-scale changes that are socioeconomic (e.g., trade policy) and environmental (e.g., climate change) [1,2]. Land 2016, 5, 10 interactions involving the use of ecological systems comprising agricultural resources such as soil and water [3]. It is defined broadly as the biodiversity of food-producing organisms and their landscapes and ecosystems, wild counterparts in natural areas, and the realms of knowledge, skills, management, access, and the related socioeconomic and cultural factors that are integral to these human-environment systems. Ecological interactions [2,9,10,11] including vegetation, soil biodiversity, water resources, and the diversity of landscape and agroecosystem components are integral to agrobiodiversity
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