The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture (BEFTA) Programme
The BEFTA Programme investigates management strategies to support biodiversity and ecosystem processes in oil palm landscapes. The overall aim of the BEFTA Programme is to test whether increasing landscape structural complexity can enhance oil palm sustainability at little or no cost to yields and profitability. Uniquely, the BEFTA Programme is a collaboration between universities, research institutes, and the oil palm industry, ensuring that management practices are realistic and implementable by land managers.
A break from oil palm
This blog was written by Jake Stone, a 3rd-year PhD student in the Insect Ecology Group. On our most recent ESSTA (Ecological and Social studies in Smallholder Tropical Agriculture) research trip to Malaysia we had the opportunity to visit Rimba, an NGO that carries out important ecological and conservation work…
In praise of crop monocultures
A blog by William Foster, a BEFTA Researcher and member of the University of Cambridge’s Insect Ecology Group (Department of Zoology). Theresa May probably did more to promote a positive image for crop monocultures than any previous British Prime Minister when she revealed, in a TV interview in 2017, that…