Abstract
Agriculture dominates the planet. Yet it has many environmental costs that are unsustainable, especially as global food demand rises. Here, we evaluate ways in which different parts of the world are succeeding in their attempts to resolve conflict between agriculture and wild nature. We envision that coordinated global action in conserving land most sensitive to agricultural activities and policies that internalise the environmental costs of agriculture are needed to deliver a more sustainable future.
Figures
![Fig 1. Financial support to farmers from taxpayers and consumers associated with agricultural policies as a proportion of the total value of agricultural production (VoP) at the farm gate.We distinguished between policies aiming to achieve specific environmental objectives beyond those required by regulation (purple segments) and all other types of support irrespective of their influence on farm production or income (orange segments), e.g., market price support, monetary transfers based on output, input subsidies. Sizes of symbols were scaled to VoP in hundreds of millions of United States dollars. Data are from the most recent year available (2008–2013) and described in S1 Text. Green and brown shading in the background is the percent of cropland and pasture at 5’ resolution in the year 2000 [7]. Financial support data were preferentially sourced from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (n = 21 countries), supplemented from the World Trade Organization (WTO) where possible for additional countries (n = 12). Data used to make this figure are provided in S1 Data.](https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/com.mendeley.prod.article-extracted-content/images/5c99ecc2-c79e-3e4c-b6d9-a5e4fe7b52eb/thumbnail-bf2771d3-b7ef-4161-8d0b-2fa49f7dd6b1-0.png)
![Fig 2. Estimated numbers of threatened species negatively impacted by agriculture.We counted the total number of species classified as either critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable by the IUCN Red List in different taxonomic units and the number that were assessed to be threatened by at least one agricultural activity [11]. Agricultural activities were annual and perennial nontimber crops, wood and pulp plantations, livestock farming and ranching, logging and wood harvesting, abstracting of surface water (agricultural use), abstraction of ground water (agricultural use), and agricultural and forestry effluents. Many other species may become threatened with agricultural expansion (S2 Fig).](https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/com.mendeley.prod.article-extracted-content/images/5c99ecc2-c79e-3e4c-b6d9-a5e4fe7b52eb/thumbnail-bec731f5-252b-45db-a59c-370b3cb29eca-1.png)
![Fig 3. Improvements in environmental performance of agriculture correlate with investments in agrienvironment schemes (AES). Temporal trend in (A) farmland bird populations and (B) GHG emissions from synthetic fertiliser were calculated over time for each country using Kendall’s τ (see S1 Text for full methods). Investments in AES were scaled by the ratio of investments in AES relative to financial transfers to agricultural producers for all other purposes so as to account for the fact that environmental improvements can be offset by policies that maximise production. Values were then summed across 5-y periods with a preemptive 2-y lag for land retirement. Habitat quality will take at least one growing season to improve following land retirement and any changes in bird populations from improved breeding success will thus largely be measurable the following year, i.e., two years later [87,88]. Spearman’s rank correlation: ρ = 0.95, p = 0.005 and ρ = -0.93, p = 0.008 for (A) and (B), respectively. Points are responses in individual countries: AU = Australia [data available for (B) only], CA = Canada, EU (aggregated together), NO = Norway, CH = Switzerland, and US. Data used to make this figure are provided in S1 Data.](https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/com.mendeley.prod.article-extracted-content/images/5c99ecc2-c79e-3e4c-b6d9-a5e4fe7b52eb/thumbnail-c4888e4e-2aaa-4853-83ad-47f019ee0861-3.png)
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CITATION STYLE
Tanentzap, A. J., Lamb, A., Walker, S., & Farmer, A. (2015). Resolving Conflicts between Agriculture and the Natural Environment. PLoS Biology, 13(9). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002242
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