Mixed Farming and Agroforestry Systems may reduce environmental impacts, but fundamental change is required within the food system
The environmental and economic impacts of adopting mixed, agroforestry, or organic practices were modelled on four farm types: cropping, dairy, laying hens and pigs. The results were variable, indicating a need for fundamental food system change.
A new report from the MIXED project found that specialised intensive systems can be efficient in their use of nutrients, but their high inputs overburden local environments through excessive nutrient balances and expose farms to price volatility of global commodities. Re-integration of cropping and livestock systems showed some potential to improve environmental indicators when underutilised resources are utilised as inputs to reduce external inputs. This is explained in a webinar that you can watch below.
However, the direct substitution of externally sourced feeds for on-farm produced feeds is unlikely to improve environmental performance. Furthermore, due to inefficiencies in protein use, farm productivity may decline if crop production is utilised on-farm instead of being sold. However, we found that organic production created more balanced systems with high nutrient use efficiency, reduced external reliance on inputs, similar or lower product environmental footprints, as shown in Figure 1 below, as well as potentially improved economic performance due to price premia. Agroforestry can provide additional benefits to mixed systems, but these may be time-limited and depend on the scale of implementation and should be applied where their use will enhance rather than reduce productivity.
