Understanding soils’ contribution to ecosystem services provision to inform farm system analysis

Amongst our natural resources, soils are often forgotten and poorly represented in resource management decision making processes. Increasing global concerns about soil degradation combined with the ever growing demands for the finite land resource demonstrate that the time is rapidly arriving when land evaluation needs to include consideration of all the ecosystem services provided to humans by a combination of land type, climate, land use and management practices. The feasibility of using an ecosystems approach to address this gap in land evaluation procedure and provide better soil security is explored here. The concepts of natural capital and ecosystem services at the heart of the ecosystems approach align very closely with the dimensions of soil security. Using an ecosystems approach to assess farm investments in either ecological infrastructure (soil conservation) or built infrastructure (irrigation) provides the basis for obtaining new insights into the impacts of those investments on the provision of services alongside environmental outcomes. An expansion of land evaluation to include multiple ecosystem services needs to include the quantification of the contribution of soils to multiple services under a specific use, considerations of natural resources use efficiency, considerations of ecological boundaries and considerations of multiple outcomes (economic, environmental, social and cultural) desired by the community. An ecosystems approach to farm investment and farm system design enables links to be made between soil capability and the ecological boundaries the agro-ecosystem needs to operate within, soil condition under a use, performance in the provision of services and environmental outcomes, which allows the multi-functionality of land resources to be taken into account in decision making.