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Abstract
Agriculture is in the business of using ecosystem services to produce food. Examining
how agro-ecosystems function provides useful insights into the economics of agriculture.
Of special interest are the presence and nature of scale effects, complementarity effects
and convexity effects in ecosystem functioning. Implications for agricultural productivity
and the economics of agriculture are evaluated. At the farm level, this helps to better
understand the current trend toward greater specialisation. Current challenges for
agricultural contracts, markets and policy are explored.