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Agri-environment schemes do not effectively protect biodiversity in Dutch agricultural landscapes

Abstract

Roughly 20% of the European Union's farmland is under some form of agri-environment scheme to counteract the negative impacts of modern agriculture on the environment1. The associated costs represent about 4% (1.7 billion euros) of the European Union's total expenditure on the Common Agricultural Policy and are expected to rise to 10% in the near future2. Although agri-environment schemes have been implemented in various countries for well over a decade, to date no reliable, sufficiently replicated studies have been performed to test whether such measures have the presumed positive effects on biodiversity1,3,4. Here we present the results of a study evaluating the contribution of agri-environment schemes to the protection of biodiversity in intensively used Dutch agricultural landscapes. We surveyed plants, birds, hover flies and bees on 78 paired fields that either had agri-environment schemes in the form of management agreements or were managed conventionally. Management agreements were not effective in protecting the species richness of the investigated species groups: no positive effects on plant and bird species diversity were found. The four most common wader species were observed even less frequently on fields with management agreements. By contrast, hover flies and bees showed modest increases in species richness on fields with management agreements. Our results indicate that there is a pressing need for a scientifically sound evaluation of agri-environment schemes.

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Figure 1: Effects of management agreements aimed at enhancing botanical diversity on number of plant species (mean ± s.e., n = 22) at plot (20 m-2) and at field scale (400 m-2; sum of 20 plots per field).
Figure 2: Effects of management agreements on breeding birds at a range of spatial scales.
Figure 3: Effects of management agreements on species richness of hover flies and bees.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all farmers who gave us permission to work on their fields, and Dienst Landelÿk Gebred for their assistance with the area and field selection. The comments of N. van Breemen, W. ter Keurs, M. Noordervliet and J. Harvey improved this manuscript. Field assistance from B. Brak, J. Smit, M. Gleichman, M. Meijer zu Schlochtern, L. de Nijs and H. Klees is greatly appreciated. This work was funded by the Dutch Stimulation Program Biodiversity.

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Correspondence to David Kleijn.

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Rationale behind the study design

Management agreements in The Netherlands can only be entered in areas designated by the Provincial authorities that are selected because of their inherently high levels of biodiversity. The nine study areas (three on each soil type) were randomly selected from a list of areas that satisfied a few minimum requirements (e.g. with respect to the number of farms with management agreements). Furthermore, in this study the two fields within a pair were in close proximity of each other and always situated within the area designated by the Provincial authorities where management agreements were allowed. Therefore, we assumed there were no systematic differences in biodiversity between control fields and fields with management agreements at the start of the agreement. This approach allowed us to determine the impact of these contracts within one single growing season. The only better approach, monitoring biodiversity on paired fields at the start of a management agreement, and re-sampling the same fields five or more years later, would not have allowed us to rapidly come up with an answer to this pressing question. Agreements generally last five or six years after which a farmer may decide to stop. Thus, effects should be apparent on fields with on average six year old management agreements for the scheme to be effective.

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Kleijn, D., Berendse, F., Smit, R. et al. Agri-environment schemes do not effectively protect biodiversity in Dutch agricultural landscapes. Nature 413, 723–725 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35099540

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