Pesticides most important barrier for biodiversity on farmland

February 28, 2010 by timbercommunity

A Europe wide study, led by Jan Bengtsson at SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) showed that fungicides and insecticides still had major negative effects on wild plant and animal species on arable farms. Since the early nineties the EU has implemented policies to reduce the dramatic negative effects of the use of pesticides on farmland. A Europe wide study showed that insecticides and fungicides still had major negative effects on wild plant and animal species on arable farms.

During the last 50 years, agricultural intensification has caused many wild plant and animal species to go extinct and has profoundly changed the functioning of agro-ecosystems. Agricultural intensification has many components, such as loss of landscape elements and larger inputs of fertilizer and pesticides. However, very little is known about the contribution of these variables to the large-scale negative effects on biodiversity. In this study, the researchers disentangled the impacts of various components of agricultural intensification on species diversity of wild plants, carabids and ground-nesting farmland birds and on the biological control of aphids.
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