European farmers can reduce agriculture climate emissions by 40 percent while also reducing pressure on biodiversity and maintaining current levels of food production, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Communications.

The international food system is responsible for about a third of global climate gas emissions. A new study led by NTNU i Norway with contributions from CICERO, explores methods to make agriculture in Europe more climate- and nature friendly without having to reduce levels of food production. According to the study, an important share of European agricultural production takes place in poorly suited areas defined as suboptimal cropland and both climate and nature can benefit from a strategic shift in production areas.

– Agricultural production in areas characterized by low productivity, steep slopes, and high fragmentation is usually associated with higher-than-average management costs and environmental impacts. Abandoning this suboptimal cropland to vegetation regrowth, while optimizing crop production in other locations, is an attractive strategy for supporting climate and biodiversity targets without compromising food security, said Dr. Ting Hua, Lead author of the paper, postdoc researcher at the Industrial Ecology Program at NTNU.

14 percent of total European cropland is suboptimal. Two thirds of this is at degradation risk and about 50 percent takes place within biodiversity priority areas. The study analyses different approaches that could contribute to reconciling crop production, climate action and nature conservation.
One key approach, intensification, which aims to increase crop production in optimal cropland areas through more intensive production, thus compensating for the loss of production in suboptimal cropland where natural vegetation is allowed to expand. Another approach, extensification, similarly abandons suboptimal cropland, but aims to compensate for the loss of production by combining agriculture in optimal areas with other vegetation, thus creating greater habitat diversity and ecosystem services within cropland landscapes. While the benefits are greater, extensification requires a larger change in land use than intensification.

– The different scenarios presented in the study, will to some extent have value in all countries, but are not equally applicable everywhere. All the scenarios considered maintain the current level of food production in Europe, and they reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve nature – but the benefits are not necessarily equal or the same in all countries. It is up to national governments to decide which strategy is more suitable in each country. The approaches that result in the greatest benefits for climate, nature and food production will likely be met with the most resistance as they require greater changes, said Bob van Oort, contributing writer and senior researcher at CICERO Center for International Climate Research.
In Europe, about 250000 square kilometers of agricultural land has been abandoned since the early nineties, which in comparison equals about 80 percent of Norway’s mainland. Furthermore, large areas of cropland are at risk of abandonment towards 2030, the study showed.