Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Divided Culture: Integrating And Conservation Biology Agriculture, John Banks

SIAS Faculty Publications

Production agriculture, with its implied ecosystem simplification, pesticide and fertilizer use, and emphasis on yield, often appears to be at odds with conservation biology. From a farmer's perspective, the weight conservation biology places on wildlife may seem overly idealistic and naive, detached from economic and sociopolitical reality. In fact, these endeavors are two sides of the same coin, with a shared heritage in decades of population and community ecological theory and experimentation. Better integration of the two disciplines requires acknowledging their various goals and working to produce mutually beneficial outcomes. The best examples of this type of integrated approach result …