Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25621333›Full record

SynthesisProceedings. Biological sciences2015

Diversification practices reduce organic to conventional yield gap.

Lauren C Ponisio, Leithen K M'Gonigle, Kevi C Mace, Jenny Palomino, Perry de Valpine, Claire Kremen

Abstract readComparative StudyMeta-Analysis
In one paragraph

Synthesis in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 77 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
77citing papers in PubMed, 2 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

77 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Financial competitiveness of organic agriculture on a global scale.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015
    Pooled it
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17 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Lauren C Ponisio
Leithen K M'Gonigle
Kevi C Mace
Jenny Palomino
Perry de Valpine
Claire Kremen

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Agriculture today places great strains on biodiversity, soils, water and the atmosphere, and these strains will be exacerbated if current trends in population growth, meat and energy consumption, and food waste continue. Thus, farming systems that are both highly productive and minimize environmental harms are critically needed. How organic agriculture may contribute to world food production has been subject to vigorous debate over the past decade. Here, we revisit this topic comparing organic and conventional yields with a new meta-dataset three times larger than previously used (115 studies containing more than 1000 observations) and a new hierarchical analytical framework that can better account for the heterogeneity and structure in the data. We find organic yields are only 19.2% (±3.7%) lower than conventional yields, a smaller yield gap than previous estimates. More importantly, we find entirely different effects of crop types and management practices on the yield gap compared with previous studies. For example, we found no significant differences in yields for leguminous versus non-leguminous crops, perennials versus annuals or developed versus developing countries. Instead, we found the novel result that two agricultural diversification practices, multi-cropping and crop rotations, substantially reduce the yield gap (to 9 ± 4% and 8 ± 5%, respectively) when the methods were applied in only organic systems. These promising results, based on robust analysis of a larger meta-dataset, suggest that appropriate investment in agroecological research to improve organic management systems could greatly reduce or eliminate the yield gap for some crops or regions.

Indexed as

BiodiversityConservation of Natural ResourcesCrops, AgriculturalFabaceaeFood SupplyOrganic AgricultureSoilSoil

Identifiers

PMID25621333
PMCPMC4286047

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.