Economic growth usually gets blamed for wrecking the planet. A new University of Minnesota-led study says it might actually help protect it, if the world plays its cards right.
Researchers found that faster economic development in poorer countries could reduce the pressure to clear forests and grasslands for new cropland, potentially avoiding a massive expansion of farmland this century. Under a "business as usual" path, the model projects global cropland could swell by more than one billion hectares by 2100. With faster development, higher crop yields and lower demand in wealthy countries, that curve could bend in the opposite direction. The authors argue that economic growth, paired with investments in agricultural innovation and shifts in diets and trade, might deliver both poverty reduction and biodiversity benefits.
U of M team and publication
The work is led by Regents Professor Stephen Polasky and an interdisciplinary University of Minnesota team, and appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to a release from the University of Minnesota, the researchers combined population, consumption, yield and trade models to see how different development and policy paths shape land use over time.
The release notes that co-authors include ecologists and economists from UMN and partner institutions, and that their scenarios factor in moderate impacts from climate change. The basic question they pose: if low-income countries get richer faster, and high-income countries curb demand, how much farmland does the world actually need?
What the model shows
The study estimates that under a business-as-usual scenario, global cropland could expand by more than one billion hectares by 2100, largely in lower-income countries where yields are relatively low and populations are growing. The peer-reviewed paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, along with its supporting datasets archived on Dryad, shows that alternative futures look very different.
In combined scenarios where poorer countries develop more quickly, people in wealthier nations reduce per-capita crop demand and trade becomes less restricted, the model suggests global cropland could actually shrink by 2100 instead of ballooning. In other words, economic development in low-income regions and lifestyle changes in high-income ones are deeply intertwined in the global land-use equation.
Policy levers and caveats
The authors are careful to stress that none of these brighter outcomes are automatic. Their analysis points to a need for stepped-up agricultural research and development, cuts to food waste and reforms to trade policy if countries hope to avoid chewing up more wild landscapes for farming.
In a University of Minnesota news release, co-author Craig Packer said faster development would "improve the lives of millions of people" while reducing pressure to clear new land for agriculture. At the same time, the team flags technological and governance barriers that could keep many nations from realizing those gains.
The researchers also emphasize that what people in richer countries choose to eat, and how much they waste, matters almost as much as growth patterns in poorer ones. Diets heavy in resource-intensive crops and high levels of discarded food both push land demand in the wrong direction.
As first reported by MPR News, Minnesota, home to much of the author team and major agricultural research centers, could play a role in turning these scenarios into real-world action. The researchers have archived their code and data on Dryad and within the paper itself, giving policymakers and other scientists a toolkit to test different assumptions.
Whether economic growth ultimately works with nature or against it, the authors suggest, will depend heavily on investment choices, diet shifts and international cooperation in the decades ahead.
