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Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield

Tropical agriculture is expanding rapidly at the expense of forest, driving a global extinction crisis. How to create agricultural landscapes that minimise the clearance of forest and maximise sustainability is thus a key issue. One possibility is protecting natural forest within or adjacent to crop...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Edwards, Felicity A., Edwards, David P., Sloan, Sean, Hamer, Keith C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956724/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24638038
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091695
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author Edwards, Felicity A.
Edwards, David P.
Sloan, Sean
Hamer, Keith C.
author_facet Edwards, Felicity A.
Edwards, David P.
Sloan, Sean
Hamer, Keith C.
author_sort Edwards, Felicity A.
collection PubMed
description Tropical agriculture is expanding rapidly at the expense of forest, driving a global extinction crisis. How to create agricultural landscapes that minimise the clearance of forest and maximise sustainability is thus a key issue. One possibility is protecting natural forest within or adjacent to crop monocultures to harness important ecosystem services provided by biodiversity spill-over that may facilitate production. Yet this contrasts with the conflicting potential that the retention of forest exports dis-services, such as agricultural pests. We focus on oil palm and obtained yields from 499 plantation parcels spanning a total of ≈23,000 ha of oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. We investigate the relationship between the extent and proximity of both contiguous and fragmented dipterocarp forest cover and oil palm yield, controlling for variation in oil palm age and for environmental heterogeneity by incorporating proximity to non-native forestry plantations, other oil palm plantations, and large rivers, elevation and soil type in our models. The extent of forest cover and proximity to dipterocarp forest were not significant predictors of oil palm yield. Similarly, proximity to large rivers and other oil palm plantations, as well as soil type had no significant effect. Instead, lower elevation and closer proximity to forestry plantations had significant positive impacts on oil palm yield. These findings suggest that if dipterocarp forests are exporting ecosystem service benefits or ecosystem dis-services, that the net effect on yield is neutral. There is thus no evidence to support arguments that forest should be retained within or adjacent to oil palm monocultures for the provision of ecosystem services that benefit yield. We urge for more nuanced assessments of the impacts of forest and biodiversity on yields in crop monocultures to better understand their role in sustainable agriculture.
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spelling pubmed-39567242014-03-18 Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield Edwards, Felicity A. Edwards, David P. Sloan, Sean Hamer, Keith C. PLoS One Research Article Tropical agriculture is expanding rapidly at the expense of forest, driving a global extinction crisis. How to create agricultural landscapes that minimise the clearance of forest and maximise sustainability is thus a key issue. One possibility is protecting natural forest within or adjacent to crop monocultures to harness important ecosystem services provided by biodiversity spill-over that may facilitate production. Yet this contrasts with the conflicting potential that the retention of forest exports dis-services, such as agricultural pests. We focus on oil palm and obtained yields from 499 plantation parcels spanning a total of ≈23,000 ha of oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. We investigate the relationship between the extent and proximity of both contiguous and fragmented dipterocarp forest cover and oil palm yield, controlling for variation in oil palm age and for environmental heterogeneity by incorporating proximity to non-native forestry plantations, other oil palm plantations, and large rivers, elevation and soil type in our models. The extent of forest cover and proximity to dipterocarp forest were not significant predictors of oil palm yield. Similarly, proximity to large rivers and other oil palm plantations, as well as soil type had no significant effect. Instead, lower elevation and closer proximity to forestry plantations had significant positive impacts on oil palm yield. These findings suggest that if dipterocarp forests are exporting ecosystem service benefits or ecosystem dis-services, that the net effect on yield is neutral. There is thus no evidence to support arguments that forest should be retained within or adjacent to oil palm monocultures for the provision of ecosystem services that benefit yield. We urge for more nuanced assessments of the impacts of forest and biodiversity on yields in crop monocultures to better understand their role in sustainable agriculture. Public Library of Science 2014-03-17 /pmc/articles/PMC3956724/ /pubmed/24638038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091695 Text en © 2014 Edwards et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Edwards, Felicity A.
Edwards, David P.
Sloan, Sean
Hamer, Keith C.
Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield
title Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield
title_full Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield
title_fullStr Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield
title_full_unstemmed Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield
title_short Sustainable Management in Crop Monocultures: The Impact of Retaining Forest on Oil Palm Yield
title_sort sustainable management in crop monocultures: the impact of retaining forest on oil palm yield
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956724/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24638038
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091695
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