Ecosystems Services - socially valuable nonfood goods & services
The World Resources Institute(WRI) defines Agroecosystems as “a biological and natural resource system managed by humans for the primary purpose of producing food as well as other socially valuable nonfood goods and environmental services.” On the WRI website, you can read a report [Pilot analysis of global ecosystems: Agroecosystems] that analyzes how the world’s agroecosystems are doing in terms of delivering of a number of key goods and services valued by society. As you can probably predict, the report shows that our agroecosystems are (amazingly) keeping up with food supply, but at the great expense of biodiversity, clean water, carbon sequestration and healthy soil. If you prefer to skip the bad news and move on toward solutions, it may be more enlightening to take a look at the WorldChanging website, which has a good interview with some of the folks at WRI about the “ecosystems services approach“. The WorldChanging website has some ‘out-there’ articles, but they have great links and also a very proactive, positive approach to finding solutions locally and globally.