Dr Will Liddell talks Prof Simon Potts of Reading University about his career in agroecology. Many of our food crops are crucially dependent on ecosystems services provided by insects and plants we call weeds. As the pressure to increase the yield and quality of crops over recent years has ramped up, so has the destruction of natural habitat in agricultural landscapes and the use of agrochemicals. However, the success of farming depends on those elements of nature which may have previously been regarded as a nuisance. Our better understanding of the importance of complex interactions is driving a move to ecological intensification, in which natural processes are valued rather than surpressed.
Sound engineering by Rob Wynne-Griffiths.