Agriculture: Global cropland could be almost halved

Date:
February 23, 2022
Source:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita"t Mu"nchen
Summary:
In the context of trade-offs between land use and biodiversity,
geographers have simulated land saving potentials for agriculture.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
With rising global demand for agricultural commodities for use as food,
feed, and bioenergy, pressure on land is increasing. At the same time,
land is an important resource for tackling the principal challenges of the
21st century - - the loss of biodiversity and global climate change. One solution to this conflict could be to increase agricultural productivity
and thus reduce the required cropland. In an interdisciplinary model-based study, LMU geographers Julia Schneider and Dr. Florian Zabel, together
with researchers from the Universities of Basel and Hohenheim, have
analyzed how much land area could be saved globally through more efficient production methods and what economic effects -- for example, on prices and trade -- this would have. As the authors reported in the journal PLOS ONE, their modeling showed that under optimized conditions up to almost half
of current cropland could be saved. As a result of increased efficiency,
the prices for agricultural products would fall in all regions and global agricultural production would increase by 2.8%.


==========================================================================
"The starting point for our work was a current scientific debate as
to whether it is better for protecting biodiversity to cultivate more extensively on more land or more intensively on less land, with all the respective pros and cons," says Schneider. "In this context, we were
interested in the actual potential to take land out of agricultural
production and what economic effects the implementation of such land
saving would have." To answer this question, the scientists used a process-based biophysical crop model for 15 globally important food and
energy crops to analyzed what land saving potential could be obtained
by agricultural intensification. For their analysis, they assumed that
the yield gap between current and potentially obtainable yields can be
closed by 80 percent through more efficient farming methods -- such as
the efficient use of fertilizers and the optimization of sowing dates or
pest and disease control -- and that the overall volumes of agricultural products should correspond to today's output.

Almost half the cropland would be sufficient The authors come to the
overall conclusion that under these conditions the current global cropland requirements could be reduced by between 37 and 48 percent. Regionally,
the land saving potential varies: In Europe and North America, for
example, there is little land saving potential, as farming is already
heavily industrialized and the degree of intensification is very high.

"Depending on the established farming system, the maximum possible yields
are almost reached in some cases," says co-author Zabel. "In regions
such as Sub- Saharan Africa by contrast, current yields are mostly well
below what would be possible based on the local environmental conditions
and with optimized farming methods." According to the model simulations,
this is also the case in India and parts of Latin America, albeit to a
somewhat lesser extent there than in Sub-Saharan Africa. More efficient production could therefore lead to large land saving potentials in
these regions. Regarding individual crops, the researchers identified particularly large land saving potentials above all for grains such as
sorghum and millet, which are currently mainly cultivated by smallholder farmers in regions with large yield gaps. However, for cash crops such
as oil palm or sugar cane, which are already cultivated very intensively,
the model showed little land saving potential.

As their next step, the scientists integrated the regional land saving potentials into an economic model developed by the Universities of
Basel and Hohenheim, in order to investigate the economic effects of
the cropland reduction. "This revealed that the more efficient use of
land would lead to a fall in prices in all regions and for all crops,"
says Schneider. In some regions, this could have a positive effect on
food security. Yet, the simulations showed that the increased efficiency
would in turn motivate the farmers in some regions to increase their production, causing the global production of agricultural goods to rise
by 2.8 percent.

Strongest economic effects in regions with high pressure on land There
were big variations in the economic effects of land saving between the investigated regions. "Surprisingly, we discovered that the strongest
economic effects -- that is, the largest changes in prices, production,
and trade flows -- did not occur in the regions with the largest land
saving potential, but in densely populated regions with high pressure on
land, such as in Malaysia and Indonesia and parts of South America. In
these countries, land is a particularly scarce and therefore an expensive resource and thus makes up a big part of the total production costs,"
says Schneider. Through globalized agricultural markets and international trade, the effects of land saving could be experienced in spatially
distant regions. Globally falling prices, for example, could lead to an increase in imports of around 30 percent in the Middle East and parts
of North Africa, as they become cheaper than domestic production.

The calculated potentials for land saving could serve as a starting
point to assess the potential for alternative usages of freed-up land,
such as carbon sequestration through afforestation and reforestation
to mitigate climate change. By quantifying the carbon sequestration
potential on saved land through the recovery of natural vegetation,
the researchers found that additionally between 114 Gt and 151 Gt CO2
could potentially be sequestered on the saved land. For comparison,
annual global emissions are currently around 42 Gt CO2.

Other options for alternative usages of the saved land could be the
cultivation of bioenergy crops or the protection of biodiversity,
e.g. by setting up nature reserves and similar measures.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita"t_Mu"nchen. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Julia M. Schneider, Florian Zabel, Franziska Schu"nemann, Ruth
Delzeit,
Wolfram Mauser. Global cropland could be almost halved:
Assessment of land saving potentials under different strategies
and implications for agricultural markets. PLOS ONE, 2022; 17 (2):
e0263063 DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pone.0263063 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220223104909.htm

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