ArticleNature sustainability2018
The environmental costs and benefits of high-yield farming.
Article in Nature sustainability, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers.
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.
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.
Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed.
- High-resolution carbon and biodiversity mapping shows correlated losses across space and agricultural products.Nature food · 2026Article
- A Multi-Isotope Approach (δMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Climate change and interprovincial trade move grain production and environmental burdens northwards in China.Nature food · 2026Article
- Reversing the great degradation of nature by reducing factors related to cropland expansion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Dynamic safe nitrogen boundary for maintaining surface water quality in China.Science advances · 2026Article
- Tailoring Australian carbon farming can realise greater co-benefits.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Genomic Insights into Historical Adaptation of Three Key Fungal Plant Pathogens.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Learning from fungicide resistance: Evolutionary insights to guide RNAi-based control of fungal crop pathogens.Fungal biology reviews · 2025Article
- Why a nuanced, pragmatic focus on yields is essential.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Data-driven nitrogen management benchmarks support China's wheat self-sufficiency by 2030.Nature food · 2025Article
- Current status, challenges, and opportunities for sustainable crop production in Xinjiang.iScience · 2025Review
- The Promotion of Alternative Crop Production Paradigms Should Be Founded on Proven Science-Based Approaches.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- An enhanced genetics × environment × management framework for yield intensification.Nature food · 2025Article
- Factors Affecting the Success of Ovum Pick-Up, In Vitro Production and Cryopreservation of Embryos in Cattle.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Ethnobiology! Until when will the colonialist legacy be reinforced?Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2025Article
- Sustainable high-yield farming is essential for bending the curve of biodiversity loss.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Sensing Technologies for Outdoor/Indoor Farming.Biosensors · 2024Review
- A brief history of primate research in the Ndoki forest.Primates; journal of primatology · 2024Review
- Impacts of the global food system on terrestrial biodiversity from land use and climate change.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
28 authors.
Funding
Abstract
How we manage farming and food systems to meet rising demand is pivotal to the future of biodiversity. Extensive field data suggest impacts on wild populations would be greatly reduced through boosting yields on existing farmland so as to spare remaining natural habitats. High-yield farming raises other concerns because expressed per unit area it can generate high levels of externalities such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and nutrient losses. However, such metrics underestimate the overall impacts of lower-yield systems, so here we develop a framework that instead compares externality and land costs per unit production. Applying this to diverse datasets describing the externalities of four major farm sectors reveals that, rather than involving trade-offs, the externality and land costs of alternative production systems can co-vary positively: per unit production, land-efficient systems often produce lower externalities. For GHG emissions these associations become more strongly positive once forgone sequestration is included. Our conclusions are limited: remarkably few studies report externalities alongside yields; many important externalities and farming systems are inadequately measured; and realising the environmental benefits of high-yield systems typically requires additional measures to limit farmland expansion. Yet our results nevertheless suggest that trade-offs among key cost metrics are not as ubiquitous as sometimes perceived.
Identifiers
30450426PMC6237269What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.