Ecosystem Services from Agriculture: Looking Beyond the Usual Suspects

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) pro-vides a transformative lens for thinking about the relation between humankind and nature. The lens is especially revealing when applied to agriculture, the most widespread managed ecosystem on the planet. ES are defined as “the conditions and processes through which natu-ral ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life ” (Daily 1997). By focusing on what ecosystems do for hu-mans, the ES concept invites analysis of what humans do to ecosystems and why they do it. Agriculture (including planted forests) conventionally supplies food, fiber, and fuel—“provisioning services ” in ES parlance (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Farmers also help to maintain the natural “supporting ” ES that make agriculture pro-ductive, such as pollination, biological pest regulation, and soil nutrient renewal. In theory, the same managed ecosystems that provide these marketed products could produce other types of ES if suitable incentives existed. The broad class of “regulation ES ” covers climate regulation, water purity, surface water flows, groundwater levels, and waste absorption and breakdown. All of these offer benefits that are poorly captured by current markets, yet whic