The implementation of agri-environmental practices (AEPs) is a key strategy to reach biodiversity and environmental objectives in agricultural landscapes, but their widespread application is often hampered by perceived trade-offs with crop production. However, the extent of these trade-offs remains poorly understood and has rarely been quantified in real-world case studies. Hence, our aim was to analyze trade-offs between crop yield, water quality and farmland biodiversity using an optimization approach for the spatial allocation of AEPs for a catchment in Eastern Germany. Potential AEPs were selected based on a co design approach with local stakeholders (stakeholder-based scenario) and were complemented by additional AEPs to reach current EU policies targets (policy-based scenarios). Consequences for crop production and environmental objectives were evaluated through spatially-explicit crop, water and biodiversity models. Contrary to common perception, we found that crop losses required to increase environmental objectives were marginal (maximum loss of 1.1% in the stakeholder based scenario). The implementation of AEPs even led to win-win outcomes for crop production and environmental objectives in over 20% of the Pareto-optimal solutions as compared to the status quo. These win-win outcomes resulted merely from biophysical effects as positive biodiversity feedbacks to agriculture were not included in our model. Spatial optimization of AEPs allocation was key to mediating trade-offs across scenarios, highlighting the large potential of spatially explicit approaches for the management of agricultural landscapes.

The implementation of Agri-Environment-Climate Measures (AECM), a component of the European Unions’ Common Agricultural Policy promoting sustainable farming practices, is often driven by economic and management factors rather than environmental effectiveness. Agricultural Decision Support Systems (ADSS) could support spatial targeting of AECM, but challenges related to usability, usefulness and interoperability may hinder their adoption.This paper presents a pilot ADSS, the AECM-Navigator, and evaluates these characteristics through stakeholder consultation. The tool enables users to test selected AECM typologies in field plots and reports model-based effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The evaluation included identifying ADSS requirements for AECM planning, user testing and a questionnaire.Results suggest that stakeholders found the AECM-Navigator intuitive and easy to use and recognized its potential to support more effective and efficient spatial targeting of AECM, although several requirements were not met. Findings support its iterative improvement to better meet stakeholders’ needs and encourage its adoption.