Altering Ecosystem Services While Considering Soil Health and Farm Income: Conceptual Framework in Crop Farming Systems

As global interest in sustainable agriculture grows, there is increasing demand for improved supply of ecosystem services (ESs) from agroecosystems. To meet this demand, farmers must implement changes in production management. However, such changes not only alter ESs supply, they also affect two fundamental aspects of farming: soil health and farm income. Therefore, to support decision-making toward improved ESs supply, it is necessary to find out how altering ESs supply simultaneously affects soil health and farm income through production management changes. Several studies have looked at fragments of the problem. However, few consider ESs at the centre of the decision-making process or a broad range of ESs in an integrated way. To fill this gap, this paper presents a conceptual framework that aims to provide a first qualitative understanding to the question and a blueprint for further quantitative analysis. The framework sets “Altering ESs” as the central objective, and considers soil health, production management, and farm income as being influenced by this objective. From this approach, it appears that “Altering ESs” results in a sequence of requirements and consequences that together affect farm income. This sequence is described with four relations: (1) “Altering ESs” requires changes in production management, (2) such change can affect soil health, (3) “Altering ESs” indirectly influences soil health through production management, (4) and finally “Altering ESs”, production management, and soil health have a combined effect on farm income. Each relation is explored qualitatively based on existing literature. The findings offer valuable insights that can contribute to develop sustainable farm business models according to the “3P-concept” in which we consider ESs for People, soil health for Planet, and farm income for Profit. The framework highlights the potential for both synergies and trade-offs between ESs, soil health, and farm income, depending on a farmer's context and decisions. Finally, the framework can serve as a blueprint for integrating ESs into bio-economic farm models.