A recent assessment from the Office for Environmental Protection, concluding that the UK Government is off track to meet its environmental targets, met with calls from some environmental organisations to accelerate and increase public funding for land-sharing policies which promote so-called ‘nature-friendly’ farming. But what if the scientific evidence indicates that these nature-friendly farming practices are likely to make things worse? In a new review article, bringing together more than 20 years’ research comparing land sharing and land sparing policy options alongside demand-side interventions such as dietary shifts and waste reduction, a team of UK scientists conclude just that. Lead author Professor Andrew Balmford and colleagues acknowledge that this will be uncomfortable reading for many conservationists, but they warn that unless radical policy change is adopted, centred on the land-efficient production of food, we will fail in our shared efforts to bend the curve of biodiversity loss.

  

Last week, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), a public body created under the Environment Act 2021 to hold Government to account for environmental protection, called for urgent action after its latest report revealed that the UK Government is failing to meet environmental targets and is not on course to fulfil its legal commitments. 

 

OEP chair Dame Gladys Stacey said: “The headline from our latest assessment – for the 12 months up to March 2024 - remains that Government is off track to achieve its environmental goals and targets.”

 

She added: “Firstly, Government must get nature-friendly farming right. It is so key to improving the environment at scale.”

 

The OEP assessment joins an expanding catalogue of official reports, studies and inquiries, all warning that the Government’s farming and countryside policies for England, which are based on a land-sharing approach of agri-environment schemes, rewilding and lower-input farming, will fall short on climate mitigation, nature conservation and food security objectives.

 

For example, a report last year from another Government watchdog, the National Audit Office, was highly critical of Defra’s Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, and the lack of evidence to support the department’s assumptions about its projected outcomes.

 

This mirrored an earlier Defra-funded impact assessment, led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), which identified a high risk of displacement of food production as a result of yield-reducing ELM options, with unknown effects on either domestic food security or the environment. 

 

And a previous study modelling different land-sharing options, commissioned by Natural England, also warned that by 2050 we will not only fall short on food production objectives, but also fail to reach the national biodiversity and climate targets these ‘nature-friendly’ approaches are touted to deliver.

 

The response to these reports from several conservation bodies and environmental NGOs has been to call for more public funding and an increased policy focus on nature-friendly farming practices.  But what if the policy prescription is wrong? What if the conclusions of these reports suggest a radical change in policy direction is needed? What if the scientific evidence indicates that a drive towards land-sharing and nature-friendly farming practices is making things worse?

 

That is precisely what conservation scientist Professor Andrew Balmford and colleagues conclude in a new review article recently published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which starts by showing that producing the food we eat has a greater impact on biodiversity than any other human activity.

 

Bringing together more than 20 years’ research assessing the relative costs and benefits of pursuing ‘land-sharing’ (which seek to boost within-farm biodiversity by reducing chemical inputs, reinstating field margins and so on) when compared to ‘land-sparing’ (which aim to make space for larger areas for nature and carbon sequestration by sustainably increasing farm yields on a smaller land footprint) the review goes on to identify a serious disconnect between what the scientific evidence tells us and the current direction of European and indeed UK farm policy. 

 

The scientific evidence is compelling that by itself land sharing is a sub-optimal way of producing food and protecting the environment. It doesn’t do either particularly effectively. By displacing domestic food production, it also risks doing even greater harm to species conservation and climate change mitigation efforts elsewhere. And it costs the taxpayer more.   

 

Why, then, is land-sparing not the predominant policy approach in the UK and beyond?  The debate over how to limit the impact of food production on wild species is still greatly contested.

 

Those arguing for a more agroecological approach often point to ‘demand-side’ policy levers, such as encouraging dietary change and reducing food waste, as grounds for justifying the inevitable ‘supply-side’ impact of adopting lower-yield farming practices.   

 

Having reviewed actual progress to date in interventions that encourage less damaging diets or cut food loss and waste, however, Balmford and colleagues conclude that while both are absolutely essential, they are far from sufficient to avert catastrophic habitat loss or to compensate for the reduced food output. 

 

On the production side, field studies from five continents quantifying the population-level impacts of land sharing, land sparing, intermediate and mixed approaches for almost 2000 individually assessed species show that implementing high-yield farming to spare natural habitats consistently outperforms land sharing, particularly for species of highest conservation concern. In Europe, a so-called three-compartment approach - where some land is farmed at low yields for the benefit of farm-associated species – performs better still, but making space for this again hinges on high-yield production elsewhere. Sparing also offers considerably greater potential for mitigating climate change.

 

Of course, delivering land sparing raises its own challenges—in particular, identifying and promoting higher yielding farm systems that are less environmentally harmful at farm level, and in terms of impacts felt further away through greenhouse gases, pesticides and nutrients.

 

Much of the yield-enhancement literature is focused on plant breeding and the development and uptake of new crop varieties. Conventional breeding, augmented by technologies such as whole-genome screening and marker-assisted breeding, will continue to be critical for improving yields and livestock feed-conversion ratios, boosting photosynthetic and water-use efficiency and increasing tolerance to pests, diseases and environmental stresses.

 

Greater access to genome editing and genetic modification techniques can help accelerate these improvements, as well as enhancing the nutritional value of crops, reducing pesticide use and even improving animal welfare.

 

But in much of the world yields can be increased sustainably and substantially using existing crop varieties and livestock breeds, through providing farmers with better access to inputs, advice, markets and insurance. This can be challenging, but for much of the world the notion that there is limited scope for marked yield increases is not well-supported by the evidence.

 

To limit the potential negative externalities of yield increases, work needs to be done to identify, promote and regulate sustainable high-yield farming practices and technologies – alongside developing policy and market mechanisms for ensuring land-efficient production is linked to setting aside land for conserving biodiversity and carbon-dense vegetation.

 

Balmford and colleagues stress that these actions will require the open-minded and ambitious commitment of government, NGOs, researchers and the private sector.  They also acknowledge that their recommendations will be uncomfortable for many conservationists, because they challenge conservation orthodoxy. They also raise significant technical, regulatory and indeed political problems, and require conservationists to work much more closely with actors they might consider part of the problem, not key contributors to the solution.

 

But the review article suggests that agriculture itself is not the problem: at a fundamental level, it is that we will shortly number 10 billion or so increasingly demanding people, while in a more proximate sense, the problem is that a focus on land-sharing and extensive wildlife-friendly farming is making things worse.

 

Balmford and colleagues highlight the importance of encouraging a shift from high-footprint diets and food waste, but conclude that even if we achieve those objectives, outcomes for biodiversity and the climate would be better if we pursue land-efficient farming as well. They warn that unless we undertake difficult and perhaps counterintuitive supply-side actions to reduce the area needed for farming through genuine sustainable intensification of agriculture, conservation will fall short in its efforts to bend the curve of biodiversity loss.

 

Daniel Pearsall is an independent consultant specialising in communication and policy development in the farming, food chain and agri-science sectors. He runs a small livestock farm in Scotland. He co-ordinates the Science for Sustainable Agriculture initiative.  

 

Peter Button is the former Vice Secretary-General at the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), based in Geneva, an intergovernmental organisation whose mission is to provide and promote an effective system of plant variety protection, with the aim of encouraging the development of new varieties of plants for the benefit of society. Originally from a UK commercial plant breeding background, Peter previously served in technical advisory roles in the UK with the British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food (MAFF). He is a member of the Science for Sustainable Agriculture advisory board.   

 

Dr Derrick Wilkinson is a retired UK economist with nearly 40 years’ international experience with the development, analysis, integration and coordination of global trade, environment and agriculture policies. A former chief economist at both the NFU and CLA, he is the author of numerous pioneering papers and research projects published, including in major peer reviewed journals.