Sparing land for nature: exploring the potential impact of changes in agricultural yield on the area needed for crop production

By A. Balmford, R. Green, Jörn P. W. Scharlemann. 2005

394 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How can rapidly growing food demands be met with least adverse impact on nature? Two very different sorts of suggestions predominate in the literature: wildlife‐friendly farming, whereby on‐farm practices are made as benign to wildlife as possible (at the potential cost of decreasing yields); and land‐sparing, in which farm yields are increased and pressure to convert land for agriculture thereby reduced (at the potential cost of decreasing wildlife populations on farmland). This paper is about one important aspect of the land‐sparing idea – the sensitivity of future requirements for cropland to plausible variation in yield increases, relative to other variables. Focusing on the 23 most energetically important food crops, we use data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) to project plausible values for 2050 for population size, diet, yield, and trade, and then look at their effect on the area needed to meet demand for the 23 crops, for the developing and developed worlds in turn. Our calculations suggest that across developing countries, the area under those crops will need to increase very considerably by 2050 (by 23% under intermediate projections), and that plausible variation in average yield has as much bearing on the extent of that expansion as does variation in population size or per capita consumption; future cropland area varies far less under foreseeable variation in the net import of food from the rest of the world. By contrast, cropland area in developed countries is likely to decrease slightly by 2050 (by 4% under intermediate projections for those 23 crops), and will be less sensitive to variation in population growth, diet, yield, or trade. Other contentious aspects of the land‐sparing idea require further scrutiny, but these results confirm its potential significance and suggest that conservationists should be as concerned about future agricultural yields as they are about population growth and rising per capita consumption.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c58b3c97133d8e2be497da8ebab56919dde79c4a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Sustainable food production: constraints, challenges and choices by 2050 (2015, background): “At the same time, the production of pesticides increased by more than 850 % (Balmford et al. 2005; Foley et al. 2011).”
Ecological impacts of early 21st century agricultural change in Europe--a review. (2009, background): “terms of restoration of natural biotopes – the concept of land sparing (Balmford et al., 2005).”
Fossil fuel depletion and socio-economic scenarios: An integrated approach (2014, background): “The foreseeable growth of land for food over the next few decades (due to population and affluence growth) is projected to be 200–750 MHa (Balmford et al., 2005; Bruinsma, 2003; Rockström et al., 2007; Schade and Pimentel, 2010), while the projected growth of new infrastructures because of…”
A reassessment of global bioenergy potential in 2050 (2015, background): “Given more moderate expectations for meat consumption and for yield growth in food crops, it is clear that cropland must continue expanding to meet the needs of the world’s population (FAO, 2003; Balmford et al., 2005; Bruinsma, 2009; Wirsenius et al., 2010).”
Policy and technological constraints to implementation of greenhouse gas mitigation options in agriculture (2007, background): “set-aside lands, bio-energy crops) may elsewhere induce conversion of forests by cultivation; conversely, increasing productivity on existing croplands may ‘spare’ some forest- or grasslands (West and Marland, 2003; Balmford et al., 2005; Mooney et al., 2005).”
Forest loss or management intensification? Identifying causes of mammal decline in cacao agroforests (2014, background): “The land-sparing approach suggests that intensified systems can increase yield per unit area, sparing land for conservation (Balmford et al., 2005; Green et al., 2005).”
Research, part of a Special Feature on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change Biocultural Refugia: Combating the Erosion of Diversity in Landscapes of Food Production (2013, background): “Key Words: agriculture; biocultural refugia; diversity; ecosystem restoration; resilience; small holders; stewardship,”
Guest Editorial, part of a Special Feature on The influence of human demography and agriculture on natural systems in the Neotropics Globalization and Land-Use Transitions in Latin America (2008, background): “…et al. 2008), but a large part of their effects in terms of land-use efficiency is reflected in a comparatively simple conflict between food production and conservation of natural and semi-natural ecosystems (Waggoner and Ausubel 2001, Balmford et al. 2005, Green et al. 2005, Grau et al. 2008a).”
Payments for Environmental Services: Evolution Toward Efficient and Fair Incentives for Multifunctional Landscapes (2012, background): “As posited by various authors independently (55, 96), the conditions where segregation or integration is superior and/or where sparing or sharing would work best depend on the convex or concave shape of the trade-off curve between multiple functions.”
Plant Genetic Resources Conservation and Utilization: The Accomplishments and Future of a Societal Insurance Policy (2006, background): “Two solutions have been proposed to address the threat posed by agriculture: wildlife-friendly farming (which increases the presence of wildlife on farmland, possibly at the cost of agricultural yields) and land sparing (which sets aside extra land for wildlife conservation by increasing agricultura”
Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice (2017, background): “…are means and standard errors. carbon at larger spatial scales because of the greater land clearing required under organic agriculture and because biodiversity (Balmford et al 2005, Phalan et al 2011) and carbon stocks (Gilroy et al 2014) decrease dramatically with conversion from natural habitats.”
Do increases in agricultural yield spare land for nature? (2009, methodology): “Agricultural yields have risen dramatically over the last 40 years (Waggoner, 1995; Matson et al., 1997; Goklany, 1998; Balmford et al., 2005; Green et al., 2005), giving rise to a prediction that growing food demands for the foreseeable future can be met while at the same time reducing the total…”