Food Production and Nature Conservation Conflicts and Solutions

About this book

Feeding the world's growing human population is increasingly challenging, especially as more people adopt a western diet and lifestyle. Doing so without causing damage to nature poses an even greater challenge. Food Production and Nature Conservation argues that in order to create a sustainable food supply whilst conserving nature, agriculture and nature must be reconnected and approached together.

The authors demonstrate that while the links between nature and food production have, to some extent, already been recognized, until now the focus has been to protect one from the impacts of the other. Instead, it is argued that nature and agriculture can, and should, work together and ultimately benefit from one another. Chapters describe efforts to protect nature through globally connected protected area systems and illustrate how farming methods are being shaped to protect nature within agricultural systems. The authors also point to many ways in which nature benefits agriculture through the ecosystem services it provides.

Overall, Food Production and Nature Conservation shows that nature conservation and food production must be considered as equally important components of future solutions to meet the global demand for food in a manner that is sustainable for both the human population and the planet as a whole.

Contents

Part 1: Food is Disconnected from Nature
1. Introduction – Food Production and Nature Conservation: Conflicts and Solutions
      Iain J. Gordon, Geoff R. Squire and Herbert H.T. Prins

Part 2: The Future Challenge for Food Security and Nature Conservation
2. Feeding the Eleven Billion within the Sustainable Development Goals Framework
      Munir A. Hanjra, Andrew Noble, Simon Langan and Jonathan Lautze
3: Limits to Crop Production
      Geoff R. Squire

Part 3: Approaches to Protecting Nature and Producing More Food
4. Can a Nature Reserve Help Feed a Family? Protected Areas and Food Security
      Nigel Dudley and Sue Stolton
5. Protected Areas, Ecosystem Services, and Food Production
      Jeffrey A. McNeely
6. Agricultural Intensification and Diversity for Reconciling Production and Environment: The Role of Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems
      Gilles Lemaire, Julie Ryschawy, Paulo César de Faccio Carvalho and François Gastal
7: A Landscape Approach to Integrating Food Production and Conservation
      Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer

Part 4: A New Agenda for Food Production and Conservation
8: New Technologies: Costs and Benefits for Food Production in Contrasting Agro-ecological Production Systems
      Michael J. Robertson, Nigel P. Preston and Graham D. Bonnett
9: Utilising Genetic Diversity to Feed the World
      Nigel Maxted and Anne Lauvie
10. How Should Land Be Used? Bioenergy and Responsible Innovation in Agricultural Systems
      Alison Mohr, Orla Shortall, Richard Helliwell and Sujatha Raman
11. Innovative Pasture Cropping: An Ecological Approach to Farming
      Ndungi wa Mungai and Colin Seis
12. Nature’s Role in Feeding the Ten Billion: How Biodiversity can Benefit Agriculture
      Rob Brooker

Part 5: A Future Framework for Linking Food Production and Conservation
13 Rebalancing Food Production and Nature Conservation: The Need for Design-oriented Research
      Walter A.H. Rossing, Rodolphe Sabatier, Félix Teillard, Jeroen C.J. Groot and Pablo Tittonell
14. Markets to Support Sustainable Food Production: Potentials and Challenges of Alternative Provisioning
      Cristina Grasseni
15. Global-Local Governance for Generating Transformative Pathways towards Sustainable Food Provisioning and Nature Conservation
      Rosemary Hill and Jessica Duncan

Part 6: Food Production and Nature Conservation
16: Conclusion: Re-engaging Agriculture with Nature
      Iain J. Gordon, Geoff R. Squire and Herbert H.T. Prins

Customer Reviews

Biography

Iain J. Gordon is Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the Division of Tropical Environments and Societies at James Cook University, Australia, and Emeritus Fellow of the James Hutton Institute, UK. Herbert H. T. Prins is Professor in Resource Ecology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Geoff R. Squire is Principal Research Scientist at the James Hutton Institute, UK.