ABSTRACT Could companies contribute to farmland biodiversity in temperate landscapes? In order to reverse the decline of biodiversity on approximately 47% of the world's cropland, it is necessary to expand the range of available tools, including novel approaches. Most of the business efforts to enhance sustainability in agricultural supply chains have been focused on the tropics. Globally important temperate crops like cereals and oilseeds are left largely unchecked. But implementation of voluntary sustainability standards to restore biodiversity in temperate and Mediterranean biomes would require doing things differently than in tropical commodities. Temperate agriculture differs both in its operations (lack of divergence between staples and cash crops, crop rotation) and landscape context (lack of agricultural expansion frontiers, complex pressures on biodiversity). Consequently, agricultural certification and similar schemes need to be linked primarily to a unit of space rather than to a specific commodity. Farmers’ engagement in the development, design, and operation of standards is important. However, necessary tools such as advanced criteria, metrics, and data infrastructure are largely lacking in temperate agriculture, and their development depends on input from conservation scientists and practitioners.
Kotecký et al. (Fri,) studied this question.