Global growth and stability of agricultural yield decrease with pollinator dependence.pdf

Global growth and stability of agricultural yield decrease with pollinator dependence Lucas A. Garibaldia,b,1, Marcelo A. Aizena, Alexandra M. Kleinc, Saul A. Cunninghamd, and Lawrence D. Hardere aLaboratorio de Ecotono, Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina and Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche-Universidad Nacional del Comahue, 8400 Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina; bDepartamento de Métodos Cuantitativos y Sistemas de Información, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1417 Buenos Aires, Argentina; cInstitute of Ecology, Ecosystem Functions Section, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany; dCommonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization Ecosystem Sciences, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia; and eDepartment of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4 Edited by Gretchen C. Daily, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved February 28, 2011 (received for review August 23, 2010) Human welfare depends on the amount and stability of agricultural production, as determined by crop yield and cultivated area. Yield increases asymptotically with the resources provided by farmers’ inputs and environmentally sensitive ecosystem services. Declining yield growth with increased inputs prompts conversion of more land to cultivation, but at the risk of eroding ecosystem services. To ex- plore the interdependence of agricultural production and its stability on ecosystem services, we present and test a general graphical model, based on Jensen’s inequality, of yield–resource relations and consider implications for land conversion. For the case of animal pollination as a resource influencing crop yield, this model predicts that incomplete and variable pollen delivery reduces yield mean and stability (inverse of variability) more for crops with greater depen- dence on pollinators. Data collected by the Food and Agriculture