The paper explores to what extent ruminant farming can enhance and preserve biodiversity, and calculates what would be an equivalent level of consumption. It found that with biodiverse-friendly grazing production, an average person could consume 2.2kg of milk per year and 0.8 kg of red meat. 

The study analyses how crop diversity impacts yield stability at a national scale, and finds that the stabilising effect of crop diversity increases as the land area increases. This doesn’t diminish the importance of field-level diversity, but it has implications for national strategies to diversify crop production. 

The report, produced by Nature Friendly Farming Network and the Wildlife Trust, finds that a modelled reduction of farming inputs; pesticides, fertilisers and animal feeds, would result in commercial gains for 165 UK farmers. They refer to this balancing act as the ‘Maximum Sustainable Output’ -- the point where a farm achieves maximum output while harnessing the natural resources available to it.

A new report from the UK’s biodiversity certification scheme Fair to Nature explores the topic of nature-friendly and wildlife-friendly farming. The report cites previous consumer research conducted by Fair to Nature which has demonstrated that a majority of consumers in the UK feel more positively about brands that have a certification label related to wildlife and biodiversity protection in the UK. 

Maintaining biodiversity is key to a healthy food system; for example it is critical for the functioning of agroecosystems (influencing factors like soil health and the hydrological cycle) and it ensures genetic diversity in crops and animals. This paper assesses whether biodiversity-focused nature-base solutions (NbS) - the management and utilisation of nature to address sustainability challenges - provide a viable solution to the challenge of maintaining both biodiversity and a sustainable food system.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive global assessment of where food and agricultural production conflicts with biodiversity conservation, and the products and countries that contribute the most to these trends. Spatial models of farming and conservation priority areas were used to estimate how the production and consumption of 48 agricultural commodities across 197 countries conflict with the conservation of 7,143 species.

This blog post from the Sustainable Food Trust explores the history of the term “regenerative” agriculture, including the Rodale Institute’s use of the term in the 1970s, the longer indigenous histories of many of the practices that fall under the umbrella, and the resurgence of the term regenerative since around 2015.