Presented by Frédéric Baudron at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) in Mérida, Yucatán (Mexico) on July 11, 2017. This presentation was part of the Agrarian Change Project Symposium: The impacts of agrarian change on local communities: Sharing experience from the field. ------- SUMMARY: In the last decade, the land sparing and land sharing approaches have provided the main framework for policy makers to debate and act on the impact of agriculture on nature. This framework has been useful in bringing attention to this issue; but it has been driven mainly by conservation ecologists. As agricultural scientists with practical experience in developing, testing and promoting alternative forms of agriculture in some of the most biodiversity-rich areas of Latin America, Eastern and Southern Africa and South Asia, the authors of this paper argue that the framework suffers from a number of limitations when considering farming and rural livelihoods. Four of these limitations are explored in four separate sections: (1) the lack of pragmatism and flexibility when considering agriculture, (2) the lack of consideration for what happens after the farm gate and for farmers’ objectives, (3) the lack of consideration for synergies between agriculture and biodiversity, and (4) the overly mechanistic way the framework links agriculture to biodiversity. In each section, approaches to overcome these limitations are proposed, and illustrated with concrete examples from Latin America, Eastern and Southern Africa and South Asia.

1. Beyond the land sparing vs. land
sharing framework:
Views from agricultural scientists
Frédéric Baudron, Systems Agronomist, CIMMYT Zimbabwe
54th Annual Meeting of the ATBC, Merida, 11th July 2017

2. Norman Borlaug: ‘Father of the Green Revolution’,
1970 recipient of the Nobel Peace Price, and CIMMYT icon

3. The ‘Borlaug hypothesis’

4. Land sparing vs. sharing:
Main conceptual framework used to explore the relations
between biodiversity & food production
Land sparing Land sharing
• Land Sparing (a.k.a. Borlaug hypothesis)
– Maximizing yield to minimize the area farmed
– Segregation of land uses
• Land Sharing (a.k.a. wildlife-friendly farming)
– Low external input use and retention of patches of natural habitat
– Integration of land uses

5. Framework developed (and used) by
conservation ecologists, not by agronomists
Biased toward biodiversity outcomes and suffers from a number of
limitations when considering farming and rural livelihoods:
1. Opposes high-yielding industrial agriculture with low-input
agriculture
– Lacks pragmatism and flexibility when it comes to the management of
agricultural systems (complex, subject to shocks and risks, etc)
2. Places too much emphasis on tradeoffs between agriculture and
biodiversity
– Ignores synergies (operating at the levels of rural livelihoods and landscape mosaics)
3. Focuses on yield
– Does not give enough consideration to inefficiencies along the food
chain (e.g., post-harvest, distribution, consumption) and to farmers’ objectives
(which may be different from yield maximization)

6. Use of external inputs does not have to imply
environmental pollution
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
0 50 100 150 200 250
Soilloss(tha-1yr-1)
Conventional tillage
Conservation agriculture
Date (days after planting)
(from Baudron et
al., 2015)

7. Ecosystem processes crucial to all agricultural
systems, not only low-input ones

8. Soil formation,
nutrient cycling &
water retention
Pest & disease
control
Pollination
Regulation of
biogeochemical &
hydrological cycles
and climate
Retention of patches of non-
crop habitat
‘Sparing’ critical ecosystems
(large areas or networks of
smaller areas)
Reduced tillage, agroforestry,
efficient use of agrochemicals
Ecosystem processes crucial to all agricultural
systems, not only low-input ones

9. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1 10 30
Numberofantscaptured
inpitfalltraps
Distance to dense hedgerow (m)(from Kebede et al., submitted)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
0 2 4 6 8
Grainyield(tha-1)
Distance from the trunk (m)
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
00:00
02:00
04:00
06:00
08:00
10:00
12:00
14:00
16:00
18:00
20:00
22:00
AirTemperature(°C) Maintaining ecosystem processes to support
food production: examples from Ethiopia
(from Shiferaw et al., submitted)

10. • Forest food
• NTFPs for local
consumption or trade
• Fuelwood
• Grazing
Complementarity between forest use and
agriculture for rural livelihoods

11. +
+
+
-
+
(from Baudron et al., 2017)
+
+
4
5
6
7
8
Near Intermediate Distant
Householddietarydiversityscore
Distance to the forest
χ2 = 110.68
P < 0.0001
Forest sustaining agriculture and dietary diversity:
flows of nutrients from forest to farms

12. Agricultural landscapes with high tree cover
may not be the least productive
(from Baudron et al., in prep)

13. Agricultural landscapes are not ‘contribute to the
maintenance of species of high conservation value
(from Baudron et al., in prep)
Wattled Ibis Ethiopian boubou
Blue-breasted bee-eater White-rumped babbler

14. Reducing food losses and wastes is as important as
increasing yield: improved storage & transport in Kenya
The first mile for high value agricultural
commodities in Kenya:
• 0.4 to 10 % of the logistic chain length
• but 20 to 37 % of the transport cost
The adoption of metal silos in
Kenya:
• Reduces grain loss by an
average of 150 to 200 kg per
household
• Allowes households to store grain
until prices are high

15. Increasing yield may not be the primary
objective of farmers
• In agricultural frontiers:
immigrant land appropriation
(i.e. appropriation through cultivation;
Baudron et al., 2011) and land
speculation (Fearnside, 1999)
• Labour productivity more
important than land
productivity in sparesely
populated areas (Baudron et al.,
2012)
• Farming style (Van der Ploeg,
1994; Leeuwis, 1993)

16. Conclusions
• Agrochemicals vs. ecosystem processes? We
need both!
• Let’s not forget about synergies between
agriculture and biodiversity…
• There is more to farming than maximizing yield
and profit!

17. Thank you
for your
interest!
f.baudron@cgiar.org