The carbon cost of agricultural production in the global land rush |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Global Development, Cornell University, 250A Warren Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA;2. Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography, Leibniz University Hannover, Schneiderberg 50, 30167 Hannover, Germany;3. School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, 3715 Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA 98195, USA;4. University of Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3, 37073 Göttingen, Germany;5. GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Neuer Jungfernstieg 21, 20354 Hamburg, Germany;6. School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA |
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| Abstract: | Increases in the number of large-scale land transactions (LSLTs), commonly known as ‘land grabbing’ or ‘global land rush,’ have occurred throughout the lower- and middle-income world over the past two decades. Despite substantial and continuing concerns about the negative socio-environmental impacts of LSLTs, trade-off analysis on boosting crop yield and minimizing climate-related effects remains limited. Our study makes use of a global dataset on LSLTs for agricultural production to estimate potential carbon emissions based on different scenarios of land cover change and fertilizer use, as well as potential value of agricultural production on transacted land. We show that, if fully implemented on ～ 38 M ha of transacted land, 2.51 GtC will be emitted during land conversion, with another 24.2 MtC/year emitted from fertilizer use, assuming farming technology of investors’ origin is adopted on transacted land. Comparison of different combinations of forest protection policies and agricultural intensification levels reveals that enforcing strict deforestation regulation while promoting fertilizer use rate improves the carbon efficiency of agricultural production. Additionally, positive spillovers of investors’ farming technology on existing arable lands of host countries can potentially double their crop yield. Our analyses thus suggest that fostering agricultural intensification and technology spillovers under strict regulation on land allocation to investors to protect forests would allow for boosting agricultural yield while minimizing carbon emissions. |
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| Keywords: | Large-scale land transactions Carbon emission Agricultural yield Sustainable intensification |
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