Literature review and recommendations for the integration of biodiversity and primary production in northern and western New South Wales

Cathy Waters and Ron Hacker
NSW Department of Primary Industries

Report to the Namoi, Border Rivers-Gwydir and Western Catchments Biodiversity and Production Working Group

Summary

The Western, Namoi and Border Rivers-Gwydir CMA areas represent a large portion of NSW and cover a range of agricultural land use activities including higher rainfall permanent pastures, extensive crop production and semi-arid rangelands. Within these varied agricultural landscapes, the restoration or maintenance of ecosystem function should result in increases in sustainable production. Since many processes essential to ecosystem function are underpinned by biological diversity management should also aim to maintain or improve this component of agricultural landscapes.

This review identifies a ‘portfolio of partial solutions’, or management practices required to maintain or improve biodiversity, clearly recognising that this outcome will require a plurality of approaches that are tailored to the local environment (including seasonal conditions, land-use and personal aspirations).

An overarching theme is recognition of the central role of landscape heterogeneity in integrating biodiversity in agricultural production systems and the need for any change in land use should to be targeted towards increased heterogeneity. At the farm level, the review identifies numerous management practices that would positively impact on biodiversity including:

• agronomic practices – management for soil physical and chemical properties, microbial activity, weeds and crop pests;
• management of non-crop areas that are intrinsically linked to agricultural production – habitat for beneficial species or mitigation of negative impacts, and
• management directly for ecosystem services such as desirable wildlife or plant species, or carbon sequestration.

While farm–scale practices are the primary focus of the review we emphasise the need to consider these in the context of the large scale dimension of biodiversity and provide a limited number of examples of how a landscape approach to conservation of biodiversity has been or could be undertaken.

At the farm scale, the general lack of empirical information on the impact of changed management practices on biodiversity means that novel management approaches will need to be examined in an adaptive management framework that allows feedback to other landholders, allowing them to apply new management within their own context. In addition, the monitoring and evaluation of on-going and past ‘restoration’ activities, as well as long-term changes in management, will be essential to provide a basic understanding of these relationships.

This review identifies a vital deficiency in both the appreciation and evaluation of ecosystem services within the agricultural sector. Little attention has been paid to understanding the relationships between farming system inputs and ecosystem outputs, and the role of biodiversity in mediating these relationships.

Provision of ecosystem services is likely to be particularly prone to market failure since tradeoffs are involved between the private benefits of marketed agricultural products and the predominantly public benefits of non-marketed ecosystems services such as biodiversity. In some instances, public and private interests may be compatible (e.g. the provision of cropping benefits through pollination or beneficial insects by retention of native vegetation). In these instances the market should work efficiently to achieve both public and private benefits. However, in many instances the public and private benefits are likely to be incompatible and financial or other incentives will be required if ecosystem services are to be delivered by agricultural producers in the public interest. A means of estimating the value of ecosystem services is required in order to determine the level of such incentives but development of a means of achieving this is beyond the scope of this report.

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