Organic farms can be friendlier to wildlife than conventional farms, but they have lower crop yields. They need more space to grow the same amount of food and so leave less room for wildlife reserves. What is the optimum land-use balance between organic farming, conventional farming and reserves?
Jenny Hodgson of the University of Leeds, UK, and her colleagues measured butterfly population densities in various British landscapes to track the effects of different types of farming on biodiversity. The team calculates that if organic yields are equal to or greater than 87% of conventional yields, it is worth switching to organic. If they are lower, it is better to farm conventionally and convert more land to reserves. But if the converted land exists only at the margins of fields, organic yields have to exceed just 35% of conventional yields to make organic farming a better strategy.
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Ecology: Biodiversity balance. Nature 467, 254 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/467254e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/467254e
