Balmford and colleagues recently argued that yield maximization and land sparing are key to reducing biodiversity loss. Complementing the response from Beillouin and colleagues, this paper critiques such yield-centred approaches from an agricultural and livelihood perspective, focusing on smallholder-dominated systems in sub-Saharan Africa. In such contexts, increasing yields is often unprofitable, not the primary objective of smallholders, erodes ecosystem services and generates environmental spill-overs if implemented in isolation. Efforts targeting high-yielding regions are also likely to fail to address food insecurity, and to exacerbate inequities instead. Based on these insights, principles for biodiversity-friendly farming that account for smallholder realities and mediate trade-offs between production/livelihoods and conservation are outlined.