Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 351, Issue 6271, Pages 388-391Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aac7287
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Global Environment Fund
- United Nations Environment Program
- United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (GEF/UNEP/FAO) Global Pollination Project
- Norwegian Environment Agency
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico Brazil
- CONICET Argentina [PIP 114-201101-00201]
- Norwegian Environment Agency [2012/16642]
- Research Council of Norway [225019]
- Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro Argentina [PI 40-B-259, PI 40-B-399]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Ecological intensification, or the improvement of crop yield through enhancement of biodiversity, may be a sustainable pathway toward greater food supplies. Such sustainable increases may be especially important for the 2 billion people reliant on small farms, many of which are undernourished, yet we know little about the efficacy of this approach. Using a coordinated protocol across regions and crops, we quantify to what degree enhancing pollinator density and richness can improve yields on 344 fields from 33 pollinator-dependent crop systems in small and large farms from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For fields less than 2 hectares, we found that yield gaps could be closed by a median of 24% through higher flower-visitor density. For larger fields, such benefits only occurred at high flower-visitor richness. Worldwide, our study demonstrates that ecological intensification can create synchronous biodiversity and yield outcomes.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available