Food production and biodiversity are not incompatible in temperate heterogeneous agricultural landscapes

We need landscape-scale approaches to design and manage agro-ecosystems that can sustain both agricultural production and biodiversity conservation. In this study, yield figures provided by 299 farmers served to quantify the energy equivalents of food production across different crops in 49 1-km2 landscapes. Our results show that the relationship between bird diversity and food energy production depends on the proportion of farmland within the landscape, with a negative correlation observed in agriculture dominated landscapes (≥ 64–74% farmland). In contrast, neither typical farmland birds nor butterflies showed any significant relationship with total food energy production. We conclude that in European temperate regions consisting of small-scale, mixed farming systems (arable and livestock production), productivity and biodiversity conservation may not be purely antagonistic, particularly when (semi-)natural habitats make up a large fraction of the landscape (≥ 20%).