Sustainable intensification of agriculture has a significant role to play in food and energy security. Protecting and enhancing biodiversity in farmland is essential in order to achieve sustainability. This can potentially be achieved by landscape-scale planting strategies that are underpinned by scientific evidence.
Dedicated biomass crops, such as miscanthus and short rotation coppiced (SRC) willows, are grown commercially in the UK for bioenergy. These are perennial crops remaining in the ground for long periods and require low agro-chemical inputs (fertilisers & pesticides). Therefore, these perennial crops are very different to food crops that are grown for biofuel on an annual basis with high inputs. Intensive farming of food crops for biofuel is controversial and results in well-documented negative impacts on farmland biodiversity. Given the differences in management of the perennial bioenergy crops and annual food crops, it was hypothesised that there may be opportunities for enhancement of biodiversity in intensively management arable farmland, but this had not been demonstrated at the landscape level.
Prof Angela Karp, who leads the Cropping Carbon strategic programme of research supported by the BBSRC at Rothamsted, commented: “We often hear most about the negative impacts of some bioenergy systems but this is really not the case for all bioenergy crops. When grown on land less suited to food crops, in integrated farming systems, perennial biomass crops like willow and miscanthus bring multiple environmental benefits that help offset some of the negative consequences of intensive food production. Multifunctional land use of this kind will be essential in meeting the diverse needs of the UK bioeconomy”.
Read more: http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news-views/biomass-crops-can-enhance-landscape-biodiversity