Agrosystem services

An additional terminology to better understand ecosystem services delivered by agriculture

authored by

Hubert Wiggering, Peter Weißhuhn, Benjamin Burkhard

Abstract

To discriminate between the contributions of ecosystems and the human subsidies to agricultural systems, we propose using an additional terminology to bring clarification into the controversial discussion about i) ecosystems versus agrosystems and ii) ecosystem services versus agrosystem services. A literature review revealed that with the exception of some very recent publications, this has not yet been sufficiently reflected, neither within the scientific nor in the policy discussion. The question remains whether to spoil the discussion with new terms again and again. We reason that it makes sense to underpin the case-specific share of agricultural inputs to the supply of agroecosystem services and to add "agro" to the terminology. We conclude, that there is a need to promote the new terminology of agrosystem services and to strengthen the use of the already established term agroecosystem services within this context. To emphasise the production patterns behind the multiple benefits agricultural systems provide to humans (commodity and non-commodity outputs) and to guarantee a reasonable weighting of related externalities in policy processes, we suggest to introduce the term agrosystem services into the discussion on ecosystem services. Agrosystem services in this context describe the anthropogenic share of agroecosystem services' generation. Agroecosystem services include multiple provisioning, regulating and cultural services from agricultural ecosystems. The inclusion of agrosystem services might accommodate the ecology-based ecosystem services concept to the specificity of managed agricultural ecosystems and therefore could be better implemented by mostly economy-driven agricultural production systems and agricultural policy.

External Organisation(s)

Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
University of Potsdam
Kiel University

Type

Article

Journal

Landscape Online

Volume

49

Pages

1-15

No. of pages

15

ISSN

1865-1542

Publication date

2016

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 2 - Zero Hunger, SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.3097/LO.201649 (Access: Open)