Beyond yields: Smallholders’ realities matter for biodiversity

Balmford and colleagues recently argued that yield maximization and land sparing are key to reducing biodiversity loss. Complementing the response from Beillouin and colleagues, this paper critiques such yield-centred approaches from an agricultural and livelihood perspective, focusing on smallholder-dominated systems in sub-Saharan Africa. In such contexts, increasing yields is often unprofitable, not the primary objective of smallholders, erodes ecosystem services and generates environmental spill-overs if implemented in isolation. Efforts targeting high-yielding regions are also likely to fail to address food insecurity, and to exacerbate inequities instead. Based on these insights, principles for biodiversity-friendly farming that account for smallholder realities and mediate trade-offs between production/livelihoods and conservation are outlined.