Lunch Hour Lecture | More land or higher yields?

About the lecture:

More land or higher yields? Comparing Paths to More Food

As human populations grow and diets change, demand for food rises. We can meet it in two main ways: by expanding farmland or by getting more from existing fields (higher yields). Both routes affect biodiversity, but not in the same way and not everywhere equally. Converting natural habitats to farmland reduces biodiversity on the farm and in nearby natural areas. Boosting yields can also reduce biodiversity, yet its effects vary with the crop, the place and the way we measure nature. When matching equal production gains within existing farmed areas, neither farmland expansion nor intensification are consistently better for biodiversity. In this talk, I’ll map their biodiversity impacts and show why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Because biodiversity also supports agriculture through pollination and natural pest control, we need to aim for balance: producing enough food while staying within sustainable limits.

UCL's popular public Lunch Hour Lecture series has been running at UCL since 1942, and showcases the exceptional research work being undertaken across UCL. Lectures are free and open to all and since 2020 have been held online.

About the speaker:

Silvia Ceausu is a research fellow in the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at University College London. She is interested in understanding, quantifying and improving the trade-offs between human activities and ecosystems. Silvia previously worked on quantifying the biodiversity impacts of agriculture as part of the TRADE Hub project (www.tradehub.earth). She currently works in the SHEFS-SA project, in which she researches how ecosystem services impact human health through food systems in southern Africa.

About the chair:

Tim Newbold is the Principal Investigator of the Global Biodiversity Change group in Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at UCL. He is interested in understanding how biodiversity is changing in response to recent environmental change, and in predicting how biodiversity will change in future. He is also interested in the consequences of biodiversity change for human societies. To address these questions, his work centres around the development of large-scale data analysis and models of biodiversity and ecosystems.