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The former Iron Curtain still drives biodiversity–profit trade-offs in German agriculture

Abstract

Agricultural intensification drives biodiversity loss and shapes farmers’ profit, but the role of legacy effects and detailed quantification of ecological–economic trade-offs are largely unknown. In Europe during the 1950s, the Eastern communist bloc switched to large-scale farming by forced collectivization of small farms, while the West kept small-scale private farming. Here we show that large-scale agriculture in East Germany reduced biodiversity, which has been maintained in West Germany due to >70% longer field edges than those in the East. In contrast, profit per farmland area in the East was 50% higher than that in the West, despite similar yield levels. In both regions, switching from conventional to organic farming increased biodiversity and halved yield levels, but doubled farmers’ profits. In conclusion, European Union policy should acknowledge the surprisingly high biodiversity benefits of small-scale agriculture, which are on a par with conversion to organic agriculture.

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Fig. 1 |: Illustrative map of West and East Germany (scale 1:30,000) at 25 May 2012.
Fig. 2: Effects of region and management on profit, revenue, cost and farm size.
Fig. 3: Effects of region and management, their interaction and edge effect on plant and arthropod species richness.
Fig. 4: Effects of region and management on overall species richness.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is the product of the project ‘Biodiversity and associated ecosystem services in small- vs. large-scale agriculture’ by the German Research Foundation (DFG BA 4438/1-1). We are grateful to L. Ádám for the identification of rove beetles, and to D.W. Crowder, A. Iverson and D. Kleijn for valuable comments on the manuscript. P.B. was supported by the Economic Development and Innovation Operational Programme of Hungary (GINOP–2.3.2–15–2016–00019).

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P.B. and T.T. conceived the study; P.B., C.F., O.M. and T.T. developed the study; P.B., R.G., F.R., S.F., C.G., A.-K.H., K.K., D.M., V.R. and A.W. collected data; R.G. and P.C. identified arthropods; P.B. analysed data with substantial input from C.F.D.; and P.B. wrote the paper with substantial input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Péter Batáry.

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Batáry, P., Gallé, R., Riesch, F. et al. The former Iron Curtain still drives biodiversity–profit trade-offs in German agriculture. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 1279–1284 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0272-x

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