Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine Conflict on Land Use across the World

Abstract

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine crisis on the world economy are real. However, these implications do not appear to be symmetric across countries and different economic sectors. Indeed, the consequences of these two shocks are more severe for some countries, regions and economic activities than for others. Considering the importance of the agricultural sector for global food security, it is important to understand the impacts of the pandemic and the conflict on the different dimensions of agriculture, namely land use. Given the scarcity of data for the last few years available from the various statistical databases, this research mainly considers the insights highlighted in the literature on the implications, in agricultural dimensions, of the most recent shocks. The study here presented shows that the Russia–Ukraine crisis has had more impact on land use changes than the pandemic, namely promoting adjustments in the decisions of farmers and policymakers to deal with constraints in agri-food chains. Nonetheless, the impacts of the conflict on land use were not totally explored.