Recent major international reports have highlighted the alarming impact of food production systems on climate change, land and biodiversity. This report shows that common ground between the agriculture and conservation sectors for mutually beneficial action exists, and that there is great potential for widespread adoption of sustainable agricultural practices that can meet our needs for food, feed, fibre, and energy. More widely, sustainable agriculture can contribute to food, water security, climate regulation and other objectives, supporting progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and other international targets for climate change, biodiversity and land degradation.

Climate change, unprecedented biodiversity loss and the spread of devastating disease send us a clear message: the time has come to reconsider our relationship to nature. Few economic sectors are as central to humanity’s relationship with nature as agriculture. Farming provides livelihoods for billions and harnesses nature’s resources to give us food, feed, fibre and energy. Yet, excessive expansion and intensification of agriculture are also drivers of soil and biodiversity degradation and contribute to climate change, undermining the agricultural sector’s own future. It is perhaps not surprising that the dialogue between the conservation and agricultural sectors is too often antagonistic, focusing on seemingly irreconcilable aims and competition for space. While acknowledging this situation, this report attempts to reframe the dialogue between the agricultural sector and the conservation community around the ‘common ground’ of shared solutions. In recent decades, the agricultural sector has significantly increased productivity and drastically reduced the number of food insecure people worldwide. This is an immense achievement. However, it has at times come at a high cost. The impact of agriculture on its own viability calls for vigilance. In many parts of the world, the only option for farmers is to search for new land to continue production or to use soil as a substrate with massive synthetic inputs.

Most production growth has been achieved through intensification – getting more out of the same land area – but there are still major concerns over habitat loss to agriculture threatening biodiversity and natural ecosystems such as forests, grasslands or peatlands in many developing countries. While the harmful effects of some agricultural inputs are becoming evident, many policies and incentives are emerging that promote sustainable farming. They encourage environmentally sound practices that conserve healthy, biodiverse, productive landscapes and soils, retain moisture, benefit nutrient cycling, decomposition and soil structure and help control pests and diseases. This report highlights the immense potential of a widespread adoption of sustainable agricultural practices for the secure, long-term production of food, feed, fibre and energy. It also emphasises that ecosystem services derived from healthy soils are not limited to the farm. When farmers work the land sustainably, they do not just feed us; they transform agriculture into a genuine nature-based solution to our most pressing societal challenges, contributing to regulating the climate, enhancing water security and providing habitats to countless species. Society enjoys these added services, though it seldom pays for them, nor does it sufficiently incentivise farmers to safeguard them. This report for the first time estimates the significant potential monetary value of these additional benefits and lays out concrete steps to achieve them.