Relocating croplands could drastically reduce the environmental impacts of global food production
Publication Date
2022Journal Title
Communications Earth and Environment
ISSN
2662-4435
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Volume
3
Issue
1
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Beyer, R., Hua, F., Martin, P., Manica, A., & Rademacher, T. (2022). Relocating croplands could drastically reduce the environmental impacts of global food production. Communications Earth and Environment, 3 (1) https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00360-6
Description
Funder: ERC Consolidator Grant 647797 (LocalAdaptation)
Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Agricultural production has replaced natural ecosystems across the planet, becoming a major driver of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and freshwater consumption. Here we combined global crop yield and environmental data in a ~1-million-dimensional mathematical optimisation framework to determine how optimising the spatial distribution of global croplands could reduce environmental impacts whilst maintaining current crop production levels. We estimate that relocating current croplands to optimal locations, whilst allowing ecosystems in then-abandoned areas to regenerate, could simultaneously decrease the current carbon, biodiversity, and irrigation water footprint of global crop production by 71%, 87%, and 100%, respectively, assuming high-input farming on newly established sites. The optimal global distribution of crops is largely similar for current and end-of-century climatic conditions across emission scenarios. Substantial impact reductions could already be achieved by relocating only a small proportion of worldwide crop production, relocating croplands only within national borders, and assuming less intensive farming systems.</jats:p>
Keywords
Article, /704/172/4081, /706/1143, /631/158/854, article
Identifiers
s43247-022-00360-6, 360
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00360-6
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/334849
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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