Highly variable performance of sustainable intensification on smallholder farms: A systematic review

Story by Jonathan Reich, Sidd Paul, Sieglinde Snapp

ScienceDirect

June 17, 2021

Highlights

Sustainable intensification (SI) technologies are overwhelmingly evaluated by only two indicators: yield and economics.
Gender, wild biodiversity, and food security are rarely measured in SI technology studies.
SI technologies often showed a range of outcomes (negative to positive) within a small geographic region.
Recommendations for SI technologies must be highly region- and site-specific.

Abstract

A global-scale systematic review (n = 241) assessed sustainable intensification (SI) technologies within smallholder agriculture; it considered multiple dimensions of performance and systematically assessed direction of response. Crop yield was overwhelmingly the top indicator. Monitoring gaps included few long-term studies (>3 years) and limited assessments of soil C stocks, food security, gender, labor, and wild biodiversity. SI interventions only produced positive responses for 70% of observations, and adjacent research sites often reported contrasting results. Monitoring of a wider range of SI domains is clearly needed, over longer time periods, with close attention to local adaptation.

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