How will farms in the future provide the food, fuel & fibre we need while delivering environmental benefits under the conditions of increasingly variable environmental change? Our latest case study by Rob Brooker highlights whether such win-wins are possible. You can read the case study here.

"We are currently facing three long-term global challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss and the development of sustainable food production systems. Ideal solutions to these challenges would be ones that deliver win-wins, addressing at least two of these simultaneously. Our work on understanding the role of biodiversity in crop production systems considers whether such win-wins are possible. For example, can we introduce biodiversity back into crop systems, making such systems more sustainable with concurrent benefits for farmland biodiversity (which has seen some of the most substantial biodiversity declines in recent decades)? And if one of the benefits of reintroducing biodiversity into crop systems is increased resilience to climate change, can we take this a step further to achieve a win-win-win? Understanding whether such outcomes are possible, and the mechanisms that underpin them, is critical as we look to develop future farming systems. Future farming systems will have to provide the food, fuel and fibre we need, deliver wider environmental benefits such as biodiversity conservation and reduced agrochemical use, and be resilient to the increasingly variable environmental conditions that we will face under climate change."