New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts

Forum¹ – Response

Social-ecological scales and sites of action: keys to conserving biodiversity while intensifying New Zealand’s agriculture?

Henrik Moller^1,*

Grant Blackwell¹

Florian Weller¹

Catriona J. MacLeod²

Chris Rosin¹

Markus Gradwohl¹

Sarah Meadows¹

Chris Perley¹

¹Agriculture Research Group on Sustainability
Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

²Landcare Research
PO Box 69
Lincoln 7640, New Zealand

*Author for correspondence.
henrik.moller@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

Our review of the putative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity in New Zealand (Moller et al. 2008) has been firmly and constructively criticised by Lee et al. (2008, this issue) in this forum on biodiversity and sustainability of New Zealand agriculture. Here we respond to their interventions in order to clarify and extend our original comments because we think that much of apparent disagreement stems from focus on different social-ecological scales, because Lee et al. (2008) have confused intensification with extensification, and because we think that further and vigorous debate will help identify ways of supporting both biodiversity and sustainable farming. Equally, we cannot accept a blanket assertion by Rowarth (2008, this issue) in this forum that agricultural intensification always protects global biodiversity. Instead, we argue for case-by-case and scale-dependent tests of the putative impacts of agricultural intensification on biodiversity in particular and sustainability of New Zealand farming in general

 

1The Forum section contains short opinion articles on topics within the scope of the New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research. Forum articles are not refereed, and editing is limited to style matters. They should be no more than the equivalent of 2500 words including references. Articles commenting on a specific paper will be referred to the author(s) of that paper for right of reply before publication. Forum articles should not be cited as scientific papers.

A08065; Online publication date 30 October 2008
Received 24 October 2008

New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 2008, Vol. 51:461–465
0028–8233/08/5104–0461 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2008

PDF file of entire paper: Print-quality (638K)

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