Developing a novel modelling framework to inform the intensification-extensification debate

Responsible farmers, consumers, food retailers and the government all want the same output from UK farming—to continue to supply good-quality food that is profitable to produce while maintaining or improving environmental quality.

One way to achieve this is to remove some land from agricultural production altogether (called land-sparing) and use the space to mitigate the negative impacts of intensive agriculture elsewhere. However, whilst this strategy has been shown to benefit birds, the impacts on the overall natural environment are less clear. In this project, the student will introduce the novel concept of “land equivalent requirement”, or the minimum land area required to produce a unit of food whilst maintaining a predefined level of other important ecosystem services, and investigate how to weigh the biodiversity benefit created by land-sparing against environmental pollution caused by intensification of agriculture.