Optimizing cropping systems to close the gap between economic profitability and environmental health

Supporting food security while maintaining ecosystem sustainability is one of the most important global challenges for humanity. Optimization of cropping systems is expected to promote the ecosystem services of agroecosystems. Yet, how and why cropping system influences the trade-offs between economic profitability and multiple ecosystem services remain poorly understood. We investigate the influence of six cropping systems on trade-offs between economic profitability and multiple ecosystem services after considering 36 agricultural ecosystem properties using field experiment data from 2020 to 2022. We show that designing cropping system is a critical tool to closing the gap between ecosystem sustainability and commercial profitability. Cropping system with three harvests within 2 yr had higher performance in overall ecosystem multiple services through enhancement of supporting, regulating, and economic performance without compromising provisioning compared with four other systems. These systems diminished the trade-off among multiple services, resulting in a 'win-win' situation for economics and multiple services. By contrast, the monoculture and double cropping systems lead to a strong trade-off between pairwise services including ecosystem health and profitability. Our work illustrates the substantial potential of rotation systems with three harvests within 2 yr in enforcing ecosystem services and closing the trade-offs among multiple agricultural ecosystem services.