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Agricultural diversification promotes sustainable and resilient global rice production

Nature Food volume 4, pages 788–796 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Rice is a staple food for half of the human population, but the effects of diversification on yields, economy, biodiversity and ecosystem services have not been synthesized. Here we quantify diversification effects on environmental and socio-economic aspects of global rice production. We performed a second-order meta-analysis based on 25 first-order meta-analyses covering four decades of research, showing that diversification can maintain soil fertility, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration and yield. We used three individual first-order meta-analyses based on 39 articles to close major research gaps on the effects of diversification on economy, biodiversity and pest control, showing that agricultural diversification can increase biodiversity by 40%, improve economy by 26% and reduce crop damage by 31%. Trade-off analysis showed that agricultural diversification in rice production promotes win–win scenarios between yield and other ecosystem services in 81% of all cases. Knowledge gaps remain in understanding the spatial and temporal effects of specific diversification practices and trade-offs.

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Fig. 1: Vote counting shows that agricultural diversification practices generally have a positive effect on ecosystem services and yields.
Fig. 2: Effects of agricultural diversification on socio-economic and environmental variables in global rice production.
Fig. 3: Agricultural diversification effects on crop yield and at least one other ecosystem service.
Fig. 4: Effects of agricultural diversification on economy, biodiversity and pest control.

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Data availability

All data used in this study are publicly available at the Web of Science (www.webofscience.com) and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database (https://www.cnki.net). The dataset54 for this article is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22915232. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All analyses were done in R (v.4.2.0) with the package metafor (v.3.4-0) for the meta-analyses. The R code is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank collaborators from China Rice Network for discussions on the study conceptualization, data collection and analysis. We thank P. Zhao (Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China) for helping with the figure visualization. We thank F. Guo (PhD student, Westlake University) for helping with ASReview during the paper selection process. T.C.W. was funded by a Westlake University start-up fund. P.B. was supported by the Hungarian National Research and Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH KKP 133839).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sustainable Agricultural Systems & Engineering Laboratory, School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China

    Xueqing He & Thomas Cherico Wanger

  2. ChinaRiceNetwork.org, Hangzhou, China

    Xueqing He, Yi Zou, Wenwu Zhou, Guanghua Wang, Zhanyu Liu, Yaoyu Bai, Zhongxue Zhang, Zhijuan Qi, Zhaopu Peng, Mingyong Ma, Jin Lv, Haiyan Cen & Thomas Cherico Wanger

  3. Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China

    Xueqing He, Yi Zou & Shanxing Gong

  4. ‘Lendület’ Landscape and Conservation Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Centre for Ecological Research, Vácrátót, Hungary

    Péter Batáry

  5. State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology & Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogen and Insect Pests, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Wenwu Zhou & Zengrong Zhu

  6. Institute of Plant Protection, Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Zhengzhou, China

    Guanghua Wang

  7. Asia Hub, Sanya Institute of Nanjing Agricultural University, Sanya, China

    Zhanyu Liu

  8. College of Plant Protection, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

    Yaoyu Bai

  9. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Halle, Germany

    Josef Settele

  10. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Josef Settele

  11. Institute of Biological Sciences, University of the Philippines Los Banos, College, Laguna, Philippines

    Josef Settele

  12. School of Water and Civil Engineering, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China

    Zhongxue Zhang & Zhijuan Qi

  13. Key Laboratory of Effective Utilization of Agricultural Water Resources, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China

    Zhongxue Zhang & Zhijuan Qi

  14. Plant Protection Institute, Hunan Academy of Agriculture Sciences, Changsha, China

    Zhaopu Peng & Mingyong Ma

  15. Huzhou Plant Protection Quarantine Soil and Fertilizer Management Station, Huzhou, China

    Jin Lv

  16. College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, and State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Haiyan Cen

  17. Key Laboratory of Spectroscopy Sensing, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Hangzhou, China

    Haiyan Cen

  18. Key Laboratory of Coastal Environment and Resources of Zhejiang Province, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China

    Thomas Cherico Wanger

  19. Agroecology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Thomas Cherico Wanger

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  1. Xueqing He
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Contributions

X.H. and T.C.W. conceptualized and designed the study and wrote the original draft. X.H., T.C.W. and S.G. collected the data. X.H., P.B. and T.C.W. developed the methodology and performed the analyses and the visualization. T.C.W. secured the funding and supervised the project. X.H., T.C.W., P.B., Y.Z., W.Z., G.W., Z.L., Y.B., Z. Zhu, J.S., Z. Zhang, Z.Q., Z.P., M.M., J.L. and H.C. reviewed and edited the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xueqing He or Thomas Cherico Wanger.

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Nature Food thanks Jay Ram Lamichhane, Yang Zhou, David Edwards and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Text 1–4, Figs. 1–12, Tables 1–19 and references.

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Supplementary Data 1

Reference list for the vote counting, second-order meta-analysis and first-order meta-analysis.

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Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data.

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He, X., Batáry, P., Zou, Y. et al. Agricultural diversification promotes sustainable and resilient global rice production. Nat Food 4, 788–796 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00836-4

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