Conventional and organic farms with more intensive management have lower soil functionality
Editor’s summary
High-intensity, high-yield “conventional” agriculture uses practices that can reduce soil health and have other negative environmental impacts. Organic farming generally has a lower environmental impact because it avoids synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, but both organic and conventional farms can vary widely in practices that affect soil. van Rijssel et al. assessed soil biota and functions, including a measure of multifunctionality, in 53 organic and conventional fields across the Netherlands. They found no significant difference in soil multifunctionality between broader agriculture types, but specific practices positively (cover cropping) or negatively (inversion tillage) affected soil functions. Adopting specific practices might thus improve the sustainability of both organic and conventional farms. —Bianca Lopez
Abstract
Organic farming is often considered to be more sustainable than conventional farming. However, both farming systems comprise highly variable management practices. In this study, we show that in organic and conventional arable fields, the multifunctionality of soils decreases with increasing agricultural management intensity. Soil organic carbon content and bacterial biomass, respectively, were the strongest abiotic and biotic predictors of soil multifunctionality. Greater soil multifunctionality was associated with less-frequent inversion tillage and higher frequency of grass-legume cover cropping, and organic farming did not outperform conventional farming. Our results suggest that reducing management intensity will enhance soil multifunctionality in both conventional and organic farming. This implies that, in contexts where high-yielding, high-intensity agriculture prevails, the paradigm of sustainable intensification should be replaced by “productive deintensification.”
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Volume 388 | Issue 6745
25 April 2025
25 April 2025
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Copyright © 2025 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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Received: 19 June 2024
Accepted: 13 March 2025
Published in print: 25 April 2025
Acknowledgments
We thank C. Weser and G. Koetsenruijter for helping with sample collection and all the farmers for participating in the study. We thank L. Serrano and R. Ochoa Huesco for providing access to NDVI data.data.
Funding:
This research was supported by Dutch Research Council grant NWO-Groen ALWGR.2015.5 (W.H.v.d.P., R.N.J.C.).
Author Contributions:
Conceptualization: S.Q.v.R., G.J.K., M.M.P., G.F.V., R.G.M.d.G., R.N.J.C., W.H.v.d.P., K.M.-J.; Funding acquisition: R.N.J.C., W.H.v.d.P.; Investigation: S.Q.v.R., G.J.K., W.H.v.d.P., K.M.-J.; Methodology: S.Q.v.R., G.J.K., M.M.P., G.F.V., R.G.M.d.G., R.N.J.C., W.H.v.d.P., K.M.-J.; Project administration: R.N.J.C., W.H.v.d.P.; Supervision: G.F.V., R.G.M.d.G., M.M.P., R.N.J.C., W.H.v.d.P.; Visualization: S.Q.v.R., G.J.K., K.M.-J.; Writing – original draft: S.Q.v.R., G.J.K., G.F.V., R.G.M.d.G., W.H.v.d.P., K.M.-J.; Writing – review & editing: S.Q.v.R., G.J.K., M.M.P., G.F.V., R.G.M.d.G., R.N.J.C., W.H.v.d.P., K.M.-J.
Competing Interests:
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data and Materials Availability:
All data and R code for the analysis is publicly available after manuscript acceptance at Zenodo (45). Sequencing data have been submitted to the European Nucleotide Archive (accession no. for 16S and ITS: PRJEB41305; for 18S: PRJEB84927).
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Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek: ALWGR.2015.5
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Authors' response to "Contextualizing Productive Deintensification in Global Agriculture"
We appreciate the comments of Biswas et al. regarding our integrated assessment of management intensity and soil multifunctionality in the Netherlands. They point out that some regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, may require some degree of intensification relative to the current situation, rather than the proposed productive deintensification. The importance of contextualizing our findings is exactly a point we highlighted in the last sentence of the abstract and discussion of our paper (1). Our research may, however, help other regions of the World to directly achieve management that benefits both soil multifunctionality and yield, rather than following an intensification-deintensification trajectory. It is preferable to avoid unintended, avoidable impacts of agricultural intensification that harm the environment or undermine soil functions (2). Of course, research to optimize intensity to particular contexts will be essential, which is facilitated by better understanding the relationships between management intensity and ecosystem function.
The limitations of NDVI as a proxy for yield are acknowledged in both our paper and the original study (3). We also agree that the influence of additional management practices beyond those included in our study is worth exploring, including pest management or nutrient balances, as also previously acknowledged (4, 5). However, it is unfortunately not feasible to measure all aspects of management in a single study (6). The more important point, however, is that an integrated view of overall management intensity offers a better lens for assessing agricultural impacts on soil than a narrow focus on particular practices (7–9). This perspective does not supersede the investigation of individual practices and their agro-ecological effects, but rather augments their value by integration. Future research to further refine indicators for management intensity and agroecosystem functionality, including yield, should be welcomed.
1. S. Q. van Rijssel, G. J. Koorneef, G. F. (Ciska) Veen, M. M. Pulleman, R. G. M. de Goede, R. N. J. Comans, W. H. van der Putten, K. Mason-Jones, Conventional and organic farms with more intensive management have lower soil functionality. Science 388, 410–415 (2025).
2. H. L. Farrell, A. Léger, M. F. Breed, E. S. Gornish, Restoration, soil organisms, and soil processes: emerging approaches. Restoration Ecology 28, S307–S310 (2020).
3. L. Serrano-Grijalva, R. Ochoa-Hueso, G. F. (Ciska) Veen, I. Repeto-Deudero, S. Q. Van Rijssel, G. J. Koorneef, W. H. Van der Putten, Normalized difference vegetation index analysis reveals increase of biomass production and stability during the conversion from conventional to organic farming. Global Change Biology 30, e17461 (2024).
4. S. Q. van Rijssel, G. F. (Ciska) Veen, G. J. Koorneef, J. M. T. (Tanja) Bakx-Schotman, F. C. ten Hooven, S. Geisen, W. H. van der Putten, Soil microbial diversity and community composition during conversion from conventional to organic agriculture. Molecular Ecology 31, 4017–4030 (2022).
5. G. J. Koorneef, M. M. Pulleman, R. G. M. de Goede, P. Barré, F. Baudin, S. Q. van Rijssel, R. N. J. Comans, Understanding the effects of organic versus conventional farming on soil organic carbon characteristics – a chronosequence study. Geoderma 459, 117371 (2025).
6. M. C. Rillig, A. Lehmann, Exploring the agricultural parameter space for crop yield and sustainability. The New Phytologist 223, 517–519 (2019).
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9. L. Armengot, L. José-María, J. M. Blanco-Moreno, M. Bassa, L. Chamorro, F. X. Sans, A novel index of land use intensity for organic and conventional farming of Mediterranean cereal fields. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 31, 699–707 (2011).
Contextualizing Productive Deintensification in Global Agriculture
Van Rijssel et al. (1) present important evidence linking increased management intensity to reduced soil multifunctionality, proposing a shift from sustainable intensification toward "productive deintensification." While this paradigm offers promise, careful consideration of regional contexts, management specificity, and productivity trade-offs is essential before broader adoption.
Firstly, the Netherlands represents an atypical scenario with historically intensive manure applications. Consequently, the observed negative relationship between management intensity and soil multifunctionality (ρ = -0.30) may be contextually bound to high-input agricultural systems. For regions characterized by nutrient-deficient soils, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, adopting blanket deintensification without nuanced adaptations could unintentionally aggravate food insecurity (2).
Secondly, although the authors found no correlation between multifunctionality and NDVI, they acknowledge that NDVI is an imperfect productivity measure. Without explicit yield data, the assumption of maintained productivity under deintensification remains speculative. Recent studies emphasize that direct yield metrics are crucial when evaluating agricultural sustainability (3).
Thirdly, specific management practices significantly influenced multifunctionality outcomes. Less frequent tillage and higher frequency of grass-legume cover cropping emerged as beneficial practices, whereas other factors like organic amendment types or pest management strategies were inadequately detailed. Recent evidence highlights that these specific practices profoundly shape soil biology and carbon dynamics, thus underpinning sustainable productivity (4, 5).
Therefore, productive deintensification should not universally replace sustainable intensification without thorough validation across diverse agroecological contexts. Rather, policymakers and researchers should promote targeted management adjustments supported by rigorous longitudinal studies that measure actual yields alongside soil health indicators. Context-specific, evidence-driven approaches will better balance agricultural productivity with environmental sustainability, securing global food systems.
References:
1. S. Q. van Rijssel et al., Conventional and organic farms with more intensive management have lower soil functionality. 388, 410-415 (2025).
2. G. N. Falconnier et al., The input reduction principle of agroecology is wrong when it comes to mineral fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa. 52, 311-326 (2023).
3. F. J. P. Wankmüller et al., Global influence of soil texture on ecosystem water limitation. Nature 635, 631-638 (2024).
4. G. Tamburini et al., Agricultural diversification promotes multiple ecosystem services without compromising yield. 6, eaba1715 (2020).
5. K. Georgiou et al., Soil Carbon Saturation: What Do We Really Know? 31, e70197 (2025).