Australia’s Biodiversity series – Part 7: Farming, pastoralism and forestry

Australian agriculture provides food and fibre for millions of people in Australia and around the world, but it can come at a cost to our environment and biodiversity.

There is a range of intensities of primary production in Australia today. Hunting and gathering and use of fire to manipulate the abundance of native species is at the lowest end of the spectrum, then livestock grazing of native pastures, right through to complete replacement of native species for intensive cropping and forestry plantation (the latter requiring inputs in the way of fertilisers, machinery, chemicals etc.). The more intensive the production method, the more food and fibre can be produced per unit area, but with greater impact on biodiversity. Less intensive production methods provide opportunities for native species to coexist with production.

Better management of our agricultural landscapes can enhance biodiversity, and in turn, enhanced biodiversity can benefit agriculture through services like pollination and recycling nutrients in soils.

In the seventh video of our Australia’s Biodiversity series, Dr Sue McIntyre talks about the different intensities of agriculture in operation across Australia and what research is telling us about better managing practices to continue supporting biodiversity in those landscapes:

To find out more about managing agricultural landscapes for biodiversity, you might like to read the corresponding chapter of CSIRO’s Biodiversity Book.

Last week’s video looked at Indigenous perspectives on Australia’s biodiversity and its management. You can review it and the other videos in the series on our YouTube channel.