Quantifying the value of wildlife and wildlife-friendly farming for coffee agriculture
Over the past century, biodiversity has suffered enormous losses, losses driven primarily through the intensification of agricultural land. Whilst there have been global initiatives to halt the decline of biodiversity, and countries have signed up to ambitious targets, there remain to be concerns regarding how farmers can marry both biodiversity and productivity. In this thesis, I aim to investigate the value of wildlife and wildlife-friendly farming for coffee (Coffea spp.) agriculture to ascertain its potential in protecting biodiversity and enhancing ecosystem services to farmers. I will be doing this in the context of Indonesia, the second and fourth largest coffee growing country in the world in terms of area and tonnage, respectively. With data collected from 2019-2023, both remotely and in the field, I aimed to: 1) Measure the provision of ecosystem services across farms of varying management types; 2) Assess the presence of biodiversity across farms of varying management types; 3) Evaluate to what extent biodiversity presence influences ecosystem functioning; and 4) Investigate how farmers’ surrounding areas and farming practices impact their perception of the ecosystem services they receive. Throughout this thesis, I present data confirming that biodiversity and ecosystem functioning increases in farms using increasingly wildlife-friendly farming methods (reduced agrochemical use and increased vegetative complexity), confirming not only the potential for coffee farms as refuges for biodiversity, but that these practices benefit coffee farmers also. Furthermore, we found that increased ecosystem functioning correlates with increased biodiversity, particularly with regards to increased soil fauna diversity. Finally, we found that in areas of increased vegetative complexity, coffee farmers were more likely to cite ecosystem services they receive from the environment than those in less complex, more conventional farming environments. Therefore, not only do farmers receive more ecosystem services in these environments, but they are better able to perceive them also. From these results, it is clear that wildlife-friendly farming can help in the provision of biodiversity in coffee-growing regions, and through this provision, farmers will preserve ecosystem functioning and help maintain coffee-growing landscapes for generations to come.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations