The degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem services on farmland stresses the urgency of farming more biodiversity-friendly. Despite increasing evidence that biodiversity-based ecosystem services can support agricultural production, farmers are reluctant to manage for biodiversity. This may have economic reasons as the costs of enhancing biodiversity may outweigh the benefits provided by specific ecosystem services. However, this has not been evaluated across multiple ecosystem services simultaneously. Focusing on grasslands, we found that only increasing legume cover supported agricultural production and could partially replace fertilizer inputs, while contributions of all other biodiversity-based ecosystem services were relatively minor. Ecosystem service delivery mostly traded off against farmer income whereas increasing management intensity maximized productivity and farmer income. These results imply that in agricultural grasslands most biodiversity-based ecosystem services should be considered public goods, and that the restoration of these services requires societal support that makes biodiversity management economically rewarding.

Human activities induce strong environmental changes that affect the quality of air, water and soil and increase the concentrations of polluting reactive compounds in the troposphere, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. These changes can lead to a loss of biodiversity and alter plant physiology and plant-pollinator interactions, essential for pollination services, with potential consequences for agricultural production. Taking into account possible interactive effects with landscape quality and pesticide input, we investigated how air pollution (ozone and nitrogen oxides) and other sources of nitrogen is related to pollinator visitation rate and their contribution to agricultural production. We showed that ozone modulates the effect of pesticide exposure on crop pollinators, increasing the probability of negative impacts on crop pollination. Our results suggest that air pollution may have unexpected consequences for food safety and highlight the need for more sustainable transport and manufacturing policies to help safeguard biodiversity and related food production

Floral plantings are promoted to foster ecological intensification of agriculture through provisioning of ecosystem services. However, a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of different floral plantings, their characteristics and consequences for crop yield across global regions is lacking. Here we quantified the impacts of flower strips and hedgerows on pest control and pollination services in adjacent crops using a global dataset of 529 sites. Flower strips, but not hedgerows, enhanced pest control services in adjacent fields by 16% on average. However, effects on crop pollination and yield were more variable. Our synthesis identifies several important drivers of variability in effectiveness of plantings: pollination services declined exponentially with distance from plantings, and perennial and older flower strips with higher flowering plant diversity enhanced pollination more effectively. These findings provide promising pathways to optimize floral plantings to more effectively contribute to ecosystem service delivery and ecological intensification of agriculture in the future.