Current conservation policies risk accelerating #biodiversity loss
"Three approaches that aim to cut the harms of #agriculture — land sharing, rewilding and #organic farming — risk driving up food imports and causing environmental damage overseas. An alternative approach is both effective and cheaper."
Land Sparing predicts that agricultural intensification is the best way to meet productive, humanitarian and conservation goals, and the recent prominence of this strategy on conservation and agricultural agendas is notable. The basic idea is that, by producing more, agriculture intensification can spare natural habitats from further agriculture expansion. Nevertheless, some authors have suggested that intensifying and increasing productivity may actually lead to increasing expansion of agricultural lands (Jevons Paradox). We test the association between agricultural yield on farmland expansion and on deforestation between 2000 and 2015 in 122 nations along the tropics, and in the main tropical regions. To this end we used Generalized Linear Models, as well as Panel Data to verify the effects of agricultural yield and socioeconomic variables on farmland expansion and deforestation. Greater yield increases lead to higher deforestation rates in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and Caribbean and increasing yield average induces agriculture expansion in East Asia and Pacific, giving support to the Jevons Paradox hypothesis. On the other hand, we found a positive association between yield average and forest area change in the tropics, nevertheless, regression coefficients were very small, compared to other significant models. Therefore, Jevons Paradox seems to be more common than Land Sparing and increasing yields inducing deforestation rather than curbing it.
Ah, the #LandSharing vs #LandSparing debate brings some data. Interesting.
"The study suggests that this “land sparing” approach would cost just 48% of the funds required to achieve the same outcomes for #biodiversity and the #climate through an approach known as “land sharing”, where conservation measures get mixed into farming by adding hedgerows to fields, reducing pesticides, and so on – all of which lowers food yield."
Study of farmer preferences shows that turning whole areas of farmland into habitats comes with half the price tag of integrating nature into productive farmland for taxpayers, whilst delivering the same, biodiversity and carbon targets.
"Enough #protein to feed the entire world could be produced on an area of land smaller than London if we replace animal farming with factories producing micro-organisms"
#PrecisionFermentation #FutureOfFood #Livestock #landsparing #ClimateSolutions
Alexander J. Stein
mem_somerville
Tobias Kuemmerle
Philip Loring
Hans Henrik Bruun
Ruthi Brandt