Crop diversification: bridging ecological and decisional scales to support an agroecological transition

This project investigates the relevance of crop diversification in Swedish farms as a promising avenue for an ecological intensification of farms, which mobilizes natural ecosystem processes to maintain high yields without compromising the environment.

In particular, this project seeks to fill in the knowledge gap about possible pathways for crop diversification, and associated trade-offs and synergies between biodiversity, climate mitigation and crop production.

To this end, we will investigate drivers, constraints, and consequences of increasing crop diversity in agricultural landscapes, with a focus on biodiversity, climate mitigation and crop production.

We will 1) study the contribution of farm-scale (agronomic scale) crop diversity to landscape-scale (ecological scale) crop diversity, 2) evaluate the effect of crop diversity at farm and landscape scales on biodiversity, climate mitigation and crop productivity, and 3) study trajectories of diversification of farms in different production contexts and identify leverage points towards crop diversification.A team with expertise in agroecology, landscape ecology and social sciences, as well as with documented experience of leading interdisciplinary research projects, will pursue these aims using cross-scale empirical studies from farms to landscapes.

We will do this in interaction with relevant stakeholders to inform the development of measures to support the diversification of cropping system in Sweden.