Assessing biodiversity potential of arable farms–A conceptual approach

Abstract

Biodiversity loss is a global problem, with agriculture being a major driver. Every agricultural operation, including management, has an impact on biodiversity because it interferes with nature. It is challenging to assess these impacts. Correspondingly, it can be difficult to support farmers to work in a more biodiversity-friendly way. This paper presents a conceptual framework for farmers to predictively assess their biodiversity potential and compare it over several years. On the one hand, parameters at field level (“on-crop”) are taken into account and, on the other hand, the landscape level (“off-crop”) with corresponding parameters is also included. The simple application and the easy integration in field record systems through data already collected by the farmer allows widespread use. In conclusion, the framework is a recommendation for biodiversity assessment. It should be further developed and validated so that new scientific findings can be incorporated into the assessment of biodiversity in order to be able to calculate and predict it even more accurately.