A Review of High Nature Value Farming Systems in Europe: Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, Drivers, Innovations and Future Prospects

Abstract Farming systems of high natural and cultural value represent approximately 30% of farmlands in the European Union and are associated with a high species and habitat diversity and/or the presence of species of European conservation concern. This study aims to synthesize the existing knowledge on the assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services, the social‐ecological drivers of change and the innovations developed around high nature value (HNV) farming systems. We performed a systematic review of scholarly publications in English reporting empirical studies of HNV farmland in Europe. Information was extracted from 178 articles. We employed a multiple correspondence analysis and a hierarchical cluster analysis to uncover patterns in the assessment of ecosystem services and biodiversity in the HNV farming literature. A qualitative analysis of open text on challenges provided insight into drivers and their interactions. Similarly, open texts on main lessons learnt and recommendations allowed us to explore innovations. Most of the studies (n = 122, 69%) assessed the dimensions related to biodiversity in which grassland and bird diversity dominated. Six clusters were disentangled. The predominant biophysical assessment of plant diversity was generally grouped into clusters 1 and 2, while less common approaches were found in the remaining clusters, which tackled social dimensions (cluster 3), considered a wider set of biodiversity groups (cluster 5), or ecosystem services beyond provisioning services, either from a sociocultural perspective (cluster 4) or from a biophysical perspective (cluster 6). Direct drivers of change in land use in HNV farming systems are mostly related to abandonment and intensification processes. Among the indirect drivers of change, policy and institutional drivers were addressed in one‐third of the studies, with the Common Agricultural Policy being the most common driver in this category. Innovations were mostly related to technological innovations, while a limited number of articles were related to social, institutional and marketing innovations. Advisory services and knowledge transfer can have transformative potential to avoid the exclusion of marginalised farmers from being subsidised. Synergies can be promoted in policy mixes to jointly address landscape conservation and product innovation by supporting niche markets. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.