Increased agricultural production through both intensification and extensification is a major driver of the current biodiversity crisis. As a response, two contrasting approaches have been advocated: ‘land sparing’, which minimizes demand for farmland by increasing yield, and ‘land sharing’, which boosts densities of wild populations on farmland but decreases agricultural yields. While these approaches have been useful in drawing attention to the impact of meeting the growing global demand for agricultural products on biodiversity, they have been driven mainly by conservation ecologists, and have often overlooked important issues related to farming. As agronomists with practical experience in developing, testing and scaling alternative forms of agriculture in some of the most biodiversity-rich areas of Latin America, Eastern and Southern Africa and South Asia, we are pointing in this paper at what we see as being two major limitations of the land sparing/sharing framework: (1) the reliance on yield-density relationships that focus on trade-offs and overlook synergies between agriculture and biodiversity, and (2) the overemphasis on crop yield, neglecting other metrics of agricultural performance which may be more important to local farmers, and more strongly associated with positive biodiversity outcomes. It is our hope that this paper will stimulate other agricultural scientists to contribute to the land sparing/sharing framework, in order to develop together with conservation ecologists viable solutions for both improved agricultural production and biodiversity conservation.

1. Sparing or sharing land?
Views from agricultural scientists
Frédéric Baudron, Systems Agronomist, CIMMYT Zimbabwe
SIP/SEP Zimbabwe lunch meeting, 18th August 2021

3. (WWF 2020)
(Rockström et al. 2009)
Maintaining the Earth system into the
only state, supporting life as we know it

4. Tropical forests: climate regulation and regulation of
rainfall patterns (Zheng and Eltahir 1998, Fu 2003,
Bonan 2008)
Great whales: nutrient cycling, ocean primary
productivity & carbon sequestration (Roman and
McCarthy 2010, Lavery et al. 2014, Roman et al., 2014)
Gray wolves: reducing over-browsing of riparian
vegetation by elks and impacting the morphology of
rivers (Beschta and Ripple 2012)
Salmon: moving nutrients from marine to terrestrial
ecosystems (Gende et al. 2002, Doughty et al. 2015)
Maintaining the Earth system into the only state
we know can support human development

5. Many emerging infectious diseases (incl. COVID-19
pandemic) have root causes in biodiversity loss

6. For the majority of species, most populations
are found in land it shares with people…
• Human population tends to be
concentrated in areas rich in
biodiversity
– 80% of the land area that is of
priority for the conservation of
mammals is occupied by
agriculture (Ceballos et al. 2005)
• PAs only cover 5.1% of all
terrestrial land (Hoekstra et al., 2005)
– Numerous ‘gap species’ not
represented in the global network
of protected areas
• Most ice-free land is occupied or
used by humans (Ellis and
Ramankutty, 2008)
(Ceballos et al. 2005)
(Baldi et al. 2017)

7. (Maxwell et al. 2016)
Change in agricultural practices is the 2nd biggest
‘killer’ for 62% of (nearly) threatened species

8. Both agricultural expansion &
agricultural intensification are implicated
Biotic additions
Biotic removal
Altered biogeochemical
cycles
Altered hydrological
cycles
Altered species
habitats
Increased use of
pesticides

9. In response: land sparing vs
land sharing
• Land sparing (a.k.a. ‘Borlaug hypothesis’)
(Green et al., 2005; Balmford et al., 2019; Borlaug,
2007; Phalan et al., 2011)
– Concentrating production on areas as small as
possible by maximizing yield
– Segregation of production & conservation into
distinct land units
• Land sharing (a.k.a. ‘wildlife friendly farming’)
(Green et al., 2005; Clough et al., 2011; Perfecto
and Vandermeer, 2010; Wright et al., 2012)
– Minimizing the use of external inputs & retaining
patches of natural habitat within farmlands
– Integration of production & conservation within
the same land units
Land sparing
Land sharing

10. Sparing or sharing land?
• Heated debate since the seminal
paper of Green et al. (2005)…
• … but largely confined to the circle
of conservation ecologists
– minimizing the negative impact of
farming to biodiversity, not solving
trade-offs
• Views from agricultural scientists:
– Reliance on yield-density
relationships: not enough attention
paid to synergies between
agriculture and biodiversity
– Too much emphasis on crop yield,
neglecting other metrics of
agricultural performance
Yield-density relationships
classically used by
conservation ecologists

11. 1.1. Agriculture supporting biodiversity
• Many species find complementary
resources in different land covers
• Several species are totally dependent on
farmland (e.g., including open-habitat bird
species)
– In many landscapes, agriculture is often the
only force creating open patches in an
otherwise homogeneous forest cover
• Clear cases of coexistence
– Cacao & coffee tropical agroforests
structurally similar to native tropical forest
– Livestock coexisting with wildlife in savannas
(+ facilitation)
– Biomass production systems
– Human-wildlife coexistence in many
landscapes dominated by agriculture
(Colding et al. 2007)

12. 1.2. Biodiversity supporting agriculture
• Land sparing would threaten low-input
smallholder production systems by
disconnecting them from ES
• ES are important for all other
production systems as well
– 25% of croplands & 33% of grassland
globally are degraded (Le et al., 2016)
– Declining global consumption of
insecticides (Zhang, 2018), but
increasing crop losses due to pests
(e.g., CC; Deutsch et al., 2018)
– The global decline in pollinators also
led to a decline in the yield of several
crops (Garibaldi et al., 2009)
• Agroecology, ecological intensification,
regenerative agriculture, nature-based
solutions for agriculture, etc

13. 1.3. Yield- vs. input-density relationships
• A simple direct & positive
relationship is often assumed in
land sparing:
+ inputs  + yield  - biodiversity
• Reducing input further in many
parts of the Global South would be
a threat to agricultural production &
the environment
• Alternatives to increased input use
(to achieve land sparing) & reduced
input use (to achieve land sharing)
– Increasing input use efficiency:
precision ag, mechanization etc
– Reducing spillover of inputs:
conservation agriculture,
agroforestry, etc

14. 2.1. Crop yield is a too narrow evaluation of ag performance
• Systematic review in Scopus in
November 2020
• Keywords ‘land sparing’ and ‘land
sharing’
• 195 articles
• 161 articles related to LSS
• 65 reviews or essays
• 96 empirical or modeling
papers

15. 2.1. Crop yield is a too narrow evaluation of ag performance
(Baudron et al. 2017, 2019; Duriaux Chavarria et al. 2018; Wood et al. 2018)
Simple Intermediate Diverse

16. 2.2. High yields may not be the primary objective of farmers
• Most farms, even in the most remote
areas, are connected to markets to
some degree (Frelat et al., 2016)
– The link between yield and profitability
is not direct (Baudron et al. 2019)
• Labour productivity may be more
important than land productivity (e.g., in
sparsely populated areas; Baudron et al.,
2012)
– Many technologies increasing yield also
tend to increase labour input (Dahlin and
Rusinamhodzi, 2019)
• Extensification for land appropriation
& speculation (Demont et al., 2007;
Roebeling and Hendrix, 2010)
• Farming style (Van der Ploeg, 1994;
Leeuwis, 1993)

17. 2.3. Looking beyond the plot
• LSS focuses on yield – a plot-
level process – & thus ignores
processes at higher scales
– Landscape composition &
configuration could be more
important than farming intensity
(Benton et al., 2003; Kleijn et al.,
2004)
– ‘Ecological land-use
complementation’ (Colding, 2007)
• Losses & wastes, the majority
of which occurring on farm
(agricultural & postharvest
stages) in low-income countries
– Hermetic metal silos & bags
– Mechanization: harvesting,
shelling/threshing, transport

18. Conclusions
• Increased agricultural production is a major cause of the
current global biodiversity crisis
– The majority of vertebrates are projected to lose habitat to agriculture by
2050 (Williams et al., 2021)
– The Global Biodiversity Framework to be adopted by the CBD (vision
2050) ignores biodiversity outside of PAs! (Gassner et al., 2020)
• The land sparing/sharing framework has brought considerable
attention to the issue, but limited impact:
– Reliance on yield-density relationships (that focus on trade-offs and
overlook synergies)
– Evaluation of agricultural performance through the narrow lens of crop
yield only (neglecting other metrics of ag performance which may be
more important to local farmers).
• Complexity of the interactions between agriculture & biodiversity
• Call for further involvement of agricultural scientists in biodiversity
conservation in ‘working landscapes’

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