Maintain or restore natural ecosystems

In the context of climate change, actions to maintain and restore natural ecosystems can help to protect key ecosystem features on the landscape, fostering a diversity of species and ecological functions. While land that is maintained in natural systems is not available for farm production, there is evidence that the integration of natural ecosystems with agricultural production lands can have notable benefits to soil and water quality without substantially reducing agricultural production. Farm operations often include incidental areas, such as idle center pivot corners, odd areas, ditches and watercourses, riparian areas, field edges, seasonal and permanent wetlands, and other similar areas not purposefully managed for food, forage, or fiber production. These incidental areas are typically near to and associated with agriculture production or conservation lands. They may be functional natural ecosystems, but more typically are degraded and have substantial opportunity to diversify and improve ecosystem services.

Individual farms, fields pastures, and grazing lands are part of a larger, landscape-level agroecosystem that provides critical ecosystem services and non-commodity goods in addition to agricultural products. Because of the global nature of climate change, impacts will be observed across landscapes and regions. Actions to increase landscape diversity and connectivity can increase the ability of systems to adapt to changing environmental conditions and stresses. While the ability of individual producers to affect landscape-level change will vary widely, the integration of landscape considerations into farm management may help to increase adaptive capacity of the agriculture sector in the long term.