Context

The global demand for food is expected to continue increasing for decades, which may drive both agricultural expansion and intensification. The associated environmental impacts are potentially considerable but will depend on how the agricultural sector develops. Currently, there are contrasting regional developments in agriculture; expansion and/or intensification in some regions and abandonment in others, as well as changes in the type of farming. However, the environmental consequences of changes in farm type are not well understood.

Objective

We have evaluated the impacts of farm type on food production and three key environmental variables—landscape openness, grassland biodiversity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—in three marginal agricultural regions in Sweden.

Methods

We do this by first dividing the population of farms in each region into types, based on their land-use and livestock holdings using an innovative clustering method. Thereafter we analysed changes in production activities for farm types over time and evaluated the environmental and food-production impacts, where landscape openness is quantified using a novel indicator.

Results and conclusion

Our results show that there is not one single farm type that would simultaneously maximize food production, grassland biodiversity, and landscape openness, whilst minimizing GHG emissions. However, there exists considerable potential to manage the trade-offs between food production and these environmental variables. For example, by reducing land use for dairying and instead increasing both cropping for food production and extensive livestock grazing to maintain landscape openness and biodiversity-rich semi-natural pastures, it would keep food production at similar levels.

Significance

Our farm typology allows us to assess the multifunctionality of farming, by relating contrasting production activities to multiple ecosystem services, grassland biodiversity and GHG emissions for informing policy towards more sustainable agriculture. We have demonstrated this with examples under Swedish conditions, but it should to a large extent also be applicable for other countries.

中文翻译：

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农场类型对农林混合区粮食生产，景观开放度，草地生物多样性和温室气体排放的影响

语境

预计全球对粮食的需求将持续数十年，这可能会推动农业扩张和集约化。相关的环境影响可能很大，但将取决于农业部门的发展方式。当前，区域农业发展存在对比。一些地区的扩张和/或集约化，而另一些地区的放弃和耕作方式的改变。然而，人们对农场类型变化的环境后果了解得还不够。

目的

我们评估了农场类型对瑞典三个边缘农业地区的粮食生产和三个关键环境变量（景观开放度，草地生物多样性和温室气体（GHG）排放）的影响。

方法

为此，我们首先使用创新的聚类方法，根据每个地区的土地使用和牲畜持有量将农场人口分为不同类型。此后，我们分析了农场类型随着时间的推移生产活动的变化，并评估了环境和粮食生产的影响，其中使用新的指标量化了景观的开放度。

结果与结论

我们的结果表明，没有一个单一的农场类型可以在最大限度地减少温室气体排放的同时，最大化粮食产量，草地生物多样性和景观开放度。但是，在管理粮食生产与这些环境变量之间的取舍方面，存在很大的潜力。例如，通过减少用于乳业的土地使用量，改为增加粮食生产的种植面积和放牧大量牲畜以保持景观开放性和生物多样性丰富的半自然牧场，这将使粮食生产保持在相似的水平。

意义

我们的农场分类学使我们能够通过将对比生产活动与多种生态系统服务，草地生物多样性和温室气体排放相关联，从而评估政策的可持续性，从而评估农业的多功能性。我们在瑞典的条件下通过实例证明了这一点，但在很大程度上也应适用于其他国家。