hard to be more local than to cycle down to Sant’Ambrogio on a late saturday morning - and having a cup in the sun at Coffee Mantra after aperitivo at the market :)

who doesn’t like maps?

3. More productivity analysis needed on this question since we cannot make claims about improvements. Better yields would reduce spillovers and maintain food security. Geo-localised farm level microdata combined with remotely sensed land use will be essential to tackle this question! 🌽

2. Set-aside on its own has minor effect on biodiversity, on generalists in this case so better interventions needed for better results (though biodiversity can be framed as a co-benefit here since it was not the focus of the set-aside policy). 🦆

1. To evaluate impacts on biodiversity we need to define what the target measure is in order to judge success. Different metrics - different results! 📊

Agricultural set-aside increases biodiversity (🔺🦜) in terms of abundance and species richness, but not in terms of abundance weighted phylogenetic distance (Shannon or HAED). The average trade-off with cereal output is not large (🔻2%) compared to land setaside (🔻 10%).

takeaways 👇