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Among natural resources, soils continue to be poorly represented in ecosystem services frameworks and decision-making processes. Similarly, the supply of multiple ecosystem services from agro-ecosystems and trade-offs between services remains under-researched. As a consequence, it is unclear how and to what extent agriculture can deliver on environmental sustainability, whilst maintaining current levels of profitability. One of the main barriers to implementation of environmental management practices is the perception by the farming industry that environmental gains come at a cost and impact negatively on profitability. Therefore, we need to demonstrate that inclusion of all the natural resources on farm in farm system design and management offers flexibility for the farm system and insures improved sustainability and greater resilience. In this study, an ecosystem approach was paired with a new generation farm system optimisation model and the inclusion of natural resources beyond land, especially biodiversity, to explore farm system design, and report on ecosystem services beyond food and fibre from different parts of the farm. The approach was tested on a sheep and beef farm in Waikato, New Zealand to explore the added benefits of replanting fragile parts of the farm landscape for soil and biodiversity enhancement on reduced emissions to air and water, and trade-offs between different services and farm profitability. The approach showed that it is possible to define and include ecological boundaries within which resources can be managed to deliver multiple benefits ranging from increased per hectare profitability to decreased environmental footprints. This is a feature analytical farm system frameworks will require in the future. The research also highlighted the importance of developing our understanding of the relationship between the condition and function of indigenous biodiversity fragments and adjacent pastoral ecosystems and their contribution to economic, environmental, cultural and social outcomes on and beyond the farm., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Farm planning processes have long been based on land evaluation, and although this analysis conceptually includes other biotic and abiotic factors beyond just land, they have typically focused on soils and land-use capability. The need to broaden this scope to more explicitly include biodiversity, ecosystem service provision, and sustainability considerations has been internationally recognised. Indigenous terrestrial and aquatic features represent a considerable asset to the farm system yet, to date, farm planning processes in New Zealand have largely failed to account for this natural capital stock and its contribution to the current or future business. Substantial knowledge gaps and lack of empirical data across many biodiversity metrics, limited institutional capacity, and lack of investment and on-going costs, are all factors contributing to the lack of integration of biodiversity considerations in farm planning processes. The net effect is the on-going depletion and degradation of indigenous biodiversity on-farm. We do, however, have an existing mechanism, in the form of 'whole farm plans', that could be utilised to integrate biodiversity natural capital and its management into farm planning and we illustrate the feasibility of this approach using a case study from the Waikato Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Ecosystem-based management (EBM) was integrated with geodesign framework. • Collaboration with the farmers was carried out to obtain farm information and co-design the landscapes. • Multifunctional farmed landscapes (MFC) can provide a wide range of ES and meet multiple demands. • Increasing landscape diversity and complexity is a key to achieving more sustainable MFC. • The integration of EBM and geodesign is an effective approach for sustainable MFC planning. An ecosystem-based management approach (EBM) is suggested as one solution to help to tackle environmental challenges facing worldwide farming systems whilst ensuring socio-economic demands are met. Despite its usefulness, the application of this approach at the farm-scale presents several implementation problems, including the difficulty of (a) incorporating the concept of ecosystem services (ES) into agricultural land use decision-making and (b) involving the farmer in the planning process. This study aims to propose a solution to overcome these challenges by utilising a geodesign framework and EBM approach to plan and design a sustainable multifunctional agricultural landscape at the farm scale. We demonstrate how the proposed approach can be applied to plan and design multifunctional agricultural landscapes that offer improved sustainability, using a New Zealand hill country farm as a case study. A geodesign framework is employed to generate future land use and management scenarios for the study area, visualize changes, and assess the impacts of future land use on landscape multifunctionality and the provision of associated ES and economic outcomes. In this framework, collaboration with the farmer was carried out to obtain farm information and co-design the farmed landscapes. The results from our study demonstrate that farmed landscapes where multiple land use/ land cover types co-exist can provide a wide range of ES and therefore, meet both economic and environmental demands. The assessment of impacts for different land use change scenarios demonstrates that land use change towards increasing landscape diversity and complexity is a key to achieving more sustainable multifunctional farmed landscapes. The integration of EBM and geodesign, is a transdisciplinary approach that can help farmers target land use and management decisions by considering the major ES that are, and could be, provided by the landscapes in which these farm systems are situated, therefore maximising the potential for beneficial outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]