A meta-analysis of trade-offs between agricultural production and ecosystem services: a biplot-based synthesis

Understanding the trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services and agricultural production is important for continuously improving the resilience and ecological sustainability of agricultural systems. Despite comprehensive evidence, meta-analyses are rarely used to synthesize findings in this field. Our study conducts a meta-analysis of the scientific literature that deals with trade-offs between ecosystem services and agricultural production, where the findings on trade-offs are normalized into a common scale and visualized using a customized biplot graph. This method facilitates the intuitive and systematic identification of patterns and comparison of relationships between different sets of trade-offs between ecosystem services and agricultural production across various locations and scenarios. We focus on trade-offs between agricultural production and four key ecosystem services: carbon sequestration, biodiversity, erosion control, and landscape aesthetics, based on studies conducted in Germany and France. These studies compare a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario with alternative scenarios that alter either an ecosystem service or agricultural production, or both simultaneously. This setup allows us to classify each tested scenario into one of four outcomes: gains in agricultural production accompanied by losses in ecosystem services, gains in ecosystem services paired with production losses, simultaneous improvements in both, or cases where both decline. Our results show that most tested scenarios involve trade-offs, where gains in ecosystem services or agricultural production come at the expense of the other. Synergies, where both agricultural production and ecosystem services improve, were rare, whereas cases of mutual decline were common. Yet it is precisely these “win–win” situations that can foster greater acceptance of ecological sustainability within agricultural systems. Their rarity highlights the persistent challenge of identifying effective policy solutions that achieve such outcomes. Our findings therefore point to the need for substantial further work to uncover pathways toward sustainable agriculture that deliver simultaneous benefits for production and ecosystem services, underscoring the urgency of more integrative and evidence-based policy design that reconciles these goals.