Un‐yielding: Evidence for the agriculture transformation we need

Rebecca Chaplin‐Kramer, M. Jahi Chappell, Elena M. Bennett

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    Abstract

    There has been a seismic shift in the center of gravity of scientific writing and thinking about agriculture over the past decades, from a prevailing focus on maximizing yields toward a goal of balancing trade‐offs and ensuring the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. Maximizing crop yields often results in a system where most benefits accrue to very few (in the form of profits), alongside irreparable environmental harm to agricultural ecosystems, landscapes, and people. Here, we present evidence that an un‐yielding, which we define as de‐emphasizing the importance of yields alone, is necessary to achieve the goal of a more Food secure, Agrobiodiverse, Regenerative, Equitable and just (FARE) agriculture. Focusing on yields places the emphasis on one particular outcome of agriculture, which is only an intermediate means to the true endpoint of human well‐being. Using yields as a placeholder for this outcome ignores the many other benefits of agriculture that people also care about, like health, livelihoods, and a sense of place. Shifting the emphasis to these multiple benefits rather than merely yields, and to their equitable delivery to all people, we find clear scientific evidence of win‐wins for people and nature through four strategies that foster FARE agriculture: reduced disturbance, systems reintegration, diversity, and justice (in the form of securing rights to land and other resources). Through a broad review of the current state of agriculture, desired futures, and the possible pathways to reach them, we argue that while trade‐offs between some ecosystem services in agriculture are unavoidable, the same need not be true of the end benefits we desire from them.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)89-104
    Number of pages16
    JournalAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences
    Volume1520
    Issue number1
    Early online date28 Dec 2022
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2023

    Bibliographical note

    This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

    Keywords

    • agroecology
    • ecosystem services
    • justice
    • sustainability
    • telecoupling

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