Authors: Kleijn, David; Fijen, Thijs;Scheper, Jeroen;

The conservation of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes requires farmers to integrate biodiversity management into their farming practices. An increasing body of ecological literature suggests that this could produce a win-win situation. More species-rich ecosystems function more effectively which leads to enhanced ecosystem service delivery such as carbon sequestration, pollination, pest regulation and ultimately crop yield. Biodiversity therefore adds value to farm businesses and this represents a rational argument for biodiversity enhancement. However, few farmers are actually adopting biodiversity management. Here, we discuss some of the drivers underlying this reluctance. We show that when the costs of biodiversity management are taken into account, currently, managing for ecosystem service delivery is often not profitable. Many of the ecosystem services that are enhanced by biodiversity management represent public goods that benefit society at large but do not benefit individual farmers. The value of some of these public goods are furthermore non-rational and difficult to quantify economically. Because farmers operate in a global economy, this suggests that effective biodiversity conservation on farmland requires stronger economic incentives than are currently available to farmers.