Beyond yields: Smallholders' realities matter for biodiversity

🧭 The article contributes to the ongoing debate on how agriculture - today’s largest threat on biodiversity - can be made more benign to nature. Recent discussions have argued maximizing yields and concentrating production on smaller areas (“land sparing”) is the most effective strategy to protect nature. In this perspective piece, Baudron complements earlier responses by bringing in an agricultural and livelihood perspective, focusing on smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa.

🌍 In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, smallholder farmers operate under complex economic, environmental and social conditions. Increasing yields is often only one of several priorities. Farmers must also manage labour, reduce risks, maintain diverse diets and ensure stable harvests across seasons. In addition, maximizing yields often proves uneconomical for many smallholders, and generally lead to the erosion of ecosystem services that are vital in a context of low input use.

🔬 The article therefore calls for farming approaches that align with farmers’ primary objectives while supporting biodiversity. These include, among others, practices that maintain key ecosystem services such as soil fertility, pest regulation and pollination, and the careful use of external inputs to avoid spill-over.

🌱 These reflections are highly relevant for the ROTATES project, which explores the potential of Minor Root and Tuber crops within agroecological transitions. Understanding how farming practices interact with biodiversity, ecosystem services and farmers’ decisions is essential to develop crop improvement and farming strategies that support sustainable production and resilient agroecosystems.