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Land Use in Agriculture

Land Use

Agriculture is the largest land use impact that humans exert 1.

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See our land use analysis for more information on data sources.

Since 1961, world cropland area has been steadily growing, while pasture land may have peaked 2.

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Source: FAOSTAT 3.

Following are estimates of land use required by particular crops.

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Area needs of plant-based crops are taken from FAOSTAT 3, with their Nutritive Factors database 4 to convert to a calorie basis. Area needs for meat is taken from Clark and Tilman 5. Fish are assumed to be produced through aquaculture, using the area estimates to grow feedstock for the United States, as reported by Froehlich et al. 6.

Value of Land

From 1973 to 2000, land converted into agricultural use in the contiguous (lower 48) United States is estimated as follows.

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In calculating these figures, we sum the low, median, and highest estimates of four times periods--1973-1980, 1980-1986, 1986-1992, and 1992-2000, rather than use the USGS figures for the full period 1973-200. These figures assess gross conversion of land into agricultural use, without subtracting agricultural land that is converted to other uses. Source: USGS 7.

Valuation of ecosystem services that these lands provide varies widely. We estimate these valuations as follows.

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Source: Ecosystem Services Partnership 8. Figures reported are the means of valuations of ecosystem services in the database. Means are trimmed with the top and bottom 10% of values removed.

Over these nearly 30 years, the annual ecosystem service gain/loss of agricultural conversion in the United States is estimated as follows.

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Our calculations were done by valuing what the USGS classifies as 'Grassland/Shrubland' as the mean of the values reported for 'Grassland' and 'Woodland and Shrubland' from ESP, and identifying Forest, Agriculture, and Wetland as Temperate Forests, Cultivated Areas, and Wetland respectively, using only studies conducted in the United States for the latter.

A gain in services from converting grassland is about counterbalanced by a loss of services from converting forests and wetlands. Avoidance of expanding agriculture into ecologically sensitive wetlands can better maintain ecosystem service value.

References

  1. Roser, M., Ritchie, H. "Land Use". Our World in Data. Accessed March 23, 2019. ↩

  2. Ausubel, J., Wernick, I., Waggoner, P. "Peak Farmland and the Prospect for Land Sparing". Population and Development Review (Supplement) 38, pp. 221-242. February 2013. ↩

  3. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "FAOSTAT". ↩ ↩2

  4. Food and Agriculture Organization. "Nutritive Factors". Accessed January 7, 2020. ↩

  5. Clark, M., Tilman, D. "Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice". Environmental Research Letters 12(6). June 2017. ↩

  6. Froehlich, H., Runge, C., Gentry, R., Gaines, S., Halpern, B. "Comparative terrestrial feed and land use of an aquaculture-dominant world". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115(20), pp. 5295-5300. May 2018. ↩

  7. United States Geological Survey. "National Land Cover Database". Accessed July 23, 2021. ↩

  8. Environmental Systems Analysis Group. "Ecosystem Services Partnership". Accessed July 23, 2021. ↩