1. Mutually beneficial pollinator diversity and crop yield outcomes in small and large farms.
- Author
-
Garibaldi LA, Carvalheiro LG, Vaissière BE, Gemmill-Herren B, Hipólito J, Freitas BM, Ngo HT, Azzu N, Sáez A, Åström J, An J, Blochtein B, Buchori D, Chamorro García FJ, Oliveira da Silva F, Devkota K, Ribeiro Mde F, Freitas L, Gaglianone MC, Goss M, Irshad M, Kasina M, Pacheco Filho AJ, Kiill LH, Kwapong P, Parra GN, Pires C, Pires V, Rawal RS, Rizali A, Saraiva AM, Veldtman R, Viana BF, Witter S, and Zhang H
- Subjects
- Africa, Animals, Asia, Flowers growth & development, Bees, Biodiversity, Crop Production, Crops, Agricultural growth & development, Pollination
- Abstract
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., (Copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science.)
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF