Agriculture, the most far-reaching way that human beings affect ecosystems, is increasingly recognized as critical for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. Many landscapes created by agriculture can be ecologically destructive, but others can contain refuges for many species, promote succession to forest or serve as nuclei for ecological restoration. A recent series of workshops at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis developed approaches to agricultural landscapes – both theoretical and empirical – that integrate their economic, social, and biological values and can guide policies to promote both sustainable use and ecological restoration. In this viewpoint, agriculture is seen not simply as fields and cropping systems, but at broader scales in both space and time, emphasizing landscape-level processes and succession over periods of decades. Farming systems are assessed not only in terms of productivity and income but also for their value in preserving biodiversity and serving as the basis for ecological restoration. Secondary ecosystems are valued as reservoirs for biodiversity, socio-economically productive elements of agricultural systems, and key stages in restoration processes. Most fundamentally, human welfare and biological conservation are viewed not as contradictory, but rather as complementary goals that can and should be integrated and promoted by the agricultural landscapes of the future.