Commercial integrated crop-livestock systems achieve comparable crop yields to specialized production systems: A meta-analysis

PLoS One. 2020 May 7;15(5):e0231840. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0231840. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Production systems that feature temporal and spatial integration of crop and livestock enterprises, also known as integrated crop-livestock systems (ICLS), have the potential to intensify production on cultivated lands and foster resilience to the effects of climate change without proportional increases in environmental impacts. Yet, crop production outcomes following livestock grazing across environments and management scenarios remain uncertain and a potential barrier to adoption, as producers worry about the effects of livestock activity on the agronomic quality of their land. To determine likely production outcomes across ICLS and to identify the most important moderating variables governing those outcomes, we performed a meta-analysis of 66 studies comparing crop yields in ICLS to yields in unintegrated controls across 3 continents, 12 crops, and 4 livestock species. We found that annual cash crops in ICLS averaged similar yields (-7% to +2%) to crops in comparable unintegrated systems. The exception was dual-purpose crops (crops managed simultaneously for grazing and grain production), which yielded 20% less on average than single-purpose crops in the studies examined. When dual-purpose cropping systems were excluded from the analysis, crops in ICLS yielded more than in unintegrated systems in loamy soils and achieved equal yields in most other settings, suggesting that areas of intermediate soil texture may represent a "sweet-spot" for ICLS implementation. This meta-analysis represents the first quantitative synthesis of the crop production outcomes of ICLS and demonstrates the need for further investigation into the conditions and management scenarios under which ICLS can be successfully implemented.

Publication types

  • Meta-Analysis
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Systematic Review

MeSH terms

  • Agriculture / economics
  • Agriculture / methods*
  • Animals
  • Cattle
  • Climate Change
  • Crop Production / economics*
  • Crops, Agricultural / economics*
  • Droughts
  • Environment
  • Livestock*
  • Seasons
  • Sheep
  • Soil

Substances

  • Soil

Grants and funding

This study is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant number #1650042 (PI: P Mohapatra), an international travel allowance through the NSF-CAPES Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide program to CP, and by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Experiment Station Hatch Projects to AG (project CA-D-PLS-2332-352H). NSF website: https://www.nsfgrfp.org/ USDA website: https://nifa.usda.gov/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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