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Larger nations benefit more than smaller nations from the stabilizing effects of crop diversity

Nature Food volume 5, pages 491–498 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Crop diversification is increasingly recognized as a strategy to stabilize national food production, yet the benefits of this approach may vary across nations due to the scale dependence of crop diversity and stability. Here we use crop production data from 131 nations from 1961 to 2020 to explore the spatial scale dependence of the crop diversity–stability relationship. Drawing on ecological theory and complementary analytical approaches, we find that as the total national harvested area increases, yield stability increases. Crop diversity stabilizes national yield stability, as does an increase in the number of farms, but these stabilizing effects are weaker in smaller countries. Our findings suggest that enhancing crop diversity at the national level may not provide a de facto universal strategy for increasing yield stability across all countries—with implications for national strategies promoting crop diversification to protect against food system shocks.

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Fig. 1: Effects of total harvested area and crop diversity on national yield stability.
Fig. 2: The interaction of effective crop diversity and national land area on national yield stability.
Fig. 3: The stabilizing effect of crop diversity on national yield stability within each country over the past six decades.

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Data availability

The sources of all data used in this study are referenced in the Methods and all raw data are freely accessible at the URLs provided. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The codes used for data preparation and analyses are available via GitHub at https://github.com/kklm500/NATFOOD-23060800.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32122053) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFF0802103). S.W. and B.M. acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31988102, 32201301) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M720257). We thank all supporters and maintainers of the public databases used in our study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Science and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Bo Meng, Qi Yang & Shaopeng Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

    Bo Meng

  3. Department of Environmental Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Zia Mehrabi

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  1. Bo Meng
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Contributions

S.W., B.M. and Z.M. designed the study, B.M. and Q.Y. conducted the data preparation and analysis, B.M. and S.W. wrote the paper and Z.M. contributed substantially to the revision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shaopeng Wang.

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Nature Food thanks Delphine Renard, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 The effects of total harvested area on national yield stability and its main determinants.

The effects of total harvested area on (a) national yield stability, (b) national average crop stability, (c) national crop asynchrony, (d) effective crop diversity, (e) precipitation instability, and (f) temperature instability. Black lines with grey shades represent linear model fits and 95% confidence intervals. Solid lines show significant relationships (P < 0.05); dashed lines show nonsignificant relationships. Linear model results are shown in each panel. Sample size (n) is 673. Two-sided t-test was used for statistical testing. ***P < 0.001; **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 The stability-area relationships for six major crops.

Wheat (a), rice (b), maize (c), soybeans (d), barley (e) and sorghum (f). Black lines with grey shades represent linear model fits and 95% confidence intervals. Solid lines show significant relationships (P < 0.05); dashed lines show nonsignificant relationships. Linear model results and sample size (n) are shown in each panel. Two-sided t-test was used for statistical testing. ***P < 0.001; **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 The potential relationships behind the scale dependency of the stabilizing effect of crop diversity.

Shown are the relationships between (a) the number of farms and effective crop diversity, (b) crop diversity and the average area of crops, as well as (c) the number of farms and the average stability of individual crops, (d) the average area of crops and the average stability of individual crops. Coloured lines with shades represent fits from linear regressions and 95% confidence intervals. Solid lines show significant relationships (P < 0.05); dashed lines show nonsignificant relationships. Linear model results are shown in each panel. Sample size (n) is 673. Two-sided t-test was used for statistical testing. ***P < 0.001; **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05. The marginal histograms show the frequency distribution of respective variables within each country group.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 A hypothesized structural equation modelling (SEM).

illustrating the direct and indirect effects of total harvested area and crop diversity on national yield stability. References about the rationales of each pathway in the SEM are provided. Details are described in method section.

Extended Data Table 1 Determinants of national yield stability (including total harvested area) based on multivariable regression analyses
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Determinants of national yield stability (including geographical cropland area) based on multivariable analyses
Full size table
Extended Data Table 3 The spatial scale dependence of the relationship between crop diversity and stability. Specifically, we tested the interaction between crop diversity and land area, total harvested area or geographic crop land area
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Tables 1–4.

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Source data

Source Data Figs. 1 and 2, Extended Data Figs. 1 and 3 and Extended Data Tables 1–3.

This file includes all source data for Figs. 1 and 2, Extended Data Figs. 1 and 3 and Extended Data Tables 1–3.

Source Data Fig. 3

This file includes the source data for Fig. 3.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

This file includes the source data for Extended Data Fig. 2.

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Meng, B., Yang, Q., Mehrabi, Z. et al. Larger nations benefit more than smaller nations from the stabilizing effects of crop diversity. Nat Food 5, 491–498 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00992-1

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