Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

New land for agriculture coming mainly at the expense of tropical ecosystems

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

There have traditionally been two ways to produce more food for an increasing population:  Convert native ecosystems like forests and grasslands to agricultural fields (what we call “extensification”) or make the yields on existing croplands go up, through the use of things like machinery, fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides, and GMOs (what we call “intensification”).

Historically, these processes have occurred in tandem:  an initial phase of extensification and land clearing followed by development and intensification.  Converting North America’s prairies to corn and wheat in the 19th century is a classic example of the former, whereas 20th-century rise of fossil fuels, and the machines and fertilizer they support, is an example of the latter.

So while it’s not surprising to learn that developing nations in tropical regions are experiencing significant deforestation for food production, as Holly Gibbs and colleagues at Stanford describe in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (citations removed for clarity), it’s important to understand the magnitude of ecosystem change as well as the drivers of change:

This study confirms that rainforests were the primary source for new agricultural land throughout the tropics during the 1980s and 1990s. More than 80% of new agricultural land came from intact and disturbed forests. Although differences occur across the tropical forest belt, the basic pattern is the same: The majority of the land for agricultural and tree plantation expansion comes from forests, woodlands, and savannas, not from previously cleared lands.

Worldwide demand for agricultural products is expected to increase by ∼50% by 2050, and evidence suggests that tropical countries will be called on to meet much of this demand. Consider, for example, that in developed countries the agricultural land area,
including pastures and permanent croplands, decreased by more than 412 million ha (34%) between 1995 and 2007, whereas developing countries saw increases of nearly 400 million ha (17.1%). Moreover, developing countries expanded their permanent croplands by 10.1% during the current decade alone, while permanent cropland areas in developed countries remained generally stable. If the agricultural expansion trends documented here for 1980–2000 persist, we can expect major clearing of intact and disturbed forest to continue and increase across the tropics to help meet swelling demands for food, fodder, and fuel.

Indeed, recent studies confirm that large-scale agro-industrial expansion is the dominant driver of deforestation in this decade, showing that forests fall as commodity markets boom. Rising commodity prices have been implicated in the destruction of Amazonian rainforests for soy production and peat swamp forests for oil palm production in Southeast Asia. Drivers of cropland expansion may impact forests directly through local or regional demand or indirectly through more globalized demand that may occur via market-mediated effects. Although this study does not specifically assess displacement or indirect land use changes, it does highlight the likelihood that intact and degraded forests will be replaced by agricultural land when such changes occur. Regardless of the mechanism, concern continues to mount about the large emissions of carbon dioxide that result when tropical forests are felled and often burned to make room for new agricultural land.

This was more of a land use change analysis, so it didn’t include a lot on the global drivers causing deforestation.  It would be a mistake, for instance, to ascribe all of this change to population growth in these tropical regions or efforts to supply more food to people living there.  Rather, extensification today is a global phenomenon driven by international trade, as the developing world loses native ecosystems to feed other countries.  And destroying forests and peatlands is a major net source of greenhouse gas emissions, so we’re also warming climate as an unintended consequence.

Why not just halt extensification and switch to intensification on existing farmland?  It’s expensive—moreso than simply clearing more land in many cases.  When the demand for cheap food rules the world, forest clearing in poor countries with abundant, cheap land is often what you get.

It should make us all pause considering that the environmental effects of the demand for goods like soy and palm oil by the industrialized world are being externalized to tropical countries.  We are now chopping down tropical forests to make soy burgers, biodiesel, and snack foods.  As Cameron Scott notes, “The Amazon, It’s What’s for Dinner.”

Reference:

H. K. Gibbs, A. S. Ruesch, F. Achard, M. K. Clayton, P. Holmgrene, N. Ramankutty, and J. A. Foley (2010). Tropical forests were the primary sources of new agricultural land in the 1980s and 1990s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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Photo courtesy of leoffreitas