Biodiversity Loss

When you look at a arable land you are actually looking at an industrial landscape that is devoid of complexity and biodiversity.  Modern industrial farming cannot be contained and so the problems it creates reach beyond the 'productive' land.  These places are increasingly sterile as you can see here 'Pesticides spark broad biodiversity loss'.

• The team examined 23 streams in the central plains of Germany, 16 in the western plains of France and 24 in southern Victoria, Australia. They classified streams according to three different levels of pesticide contamination: uncontaminated, slightly contaminated and highly contaminated.
  
  The researchers found that there were up to 42% fewer species in highly contaminated than in uncontaminated streams in Europe. Highly contaminated streams in Australia showed a decrease in the number of invertebrate families by up to 27% when contrasted with uncontaminated streams.

 Unlike pastoral farming, arable farming competes with nature at the base of the food chain and so higher order life has no base to build upon.