Abstract
Classical land rent theories imply that the best land is cultivated first. This principle forms the basis of many land-use studies, but empirical evidence remains limited, especially on a global scale. In this paper, we estimate the effects of agricultural suitability and market accessibility on the spatial allocation of cultivated areas at a 30 arc-min resolution in 15 world regions. Our results show that both determinants often have a significant positive effect on the cropland fraction, but with large variations in strength across regions. Based on a quantile analysis, we find that agricultural suitability is the dominant driver of cropland allocation in North America, Middle East and North Africa and Eastern Europe, whereas market accessibility shows a stronger effect in other regions, such as Western Africa. In some regions, such as South and Central America, both determinants have a limited effect on cropland fraction. Comparison of high versus low quantile regression coefficients shows that, in most regions, densely cropped areas are more sensitive to agricultural suitability and market accessibility than sparsely cropped areas.
Highlights
Cultivated land covers around 1,500 million hectares (Mha), representing nearly 12% of the Earth’s land area [1, 2]
Cropland is preferentially distributed in areas with high levels of agricultural suitability and market accessibility in most regions
The prevailing driver of cropland allocation differs between regions
Summary
Cultivated land covers around 1,500 million hectares (Mha), representing nearly 12% of the Earth’s land area [1, 2] Besides their key role in food, feed and bioenergy supplies, cultivated areas have major impacts on the environment, including climate change, water pollution, and biodiversity loss [3,4,5,6,7]. Climate mitigation scenarios stress the importance of freeing up land to regrow forest or to produce bioenergy crops [10] Faced with this dilemma, optimizing the use of cultivated land represents a major challenge: increasing the supply of biomass for food and non-food purposes while limiting negative impacts on climate and biodiversity [11, 12].
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