Retire Marginal Land and Bring Nature into Farming

Without fanfare, the global food system has reached peak land. Since 2000, the amount of land used for food production — both arable land for crops and pasture for livestock — has declined. While that seems to be good news for the environment, we are also still expanding food production into some areas at the expense of forests, grasslands, and wetlands.

Remarkably, since the amount of land that we farm began to decline, we have produced significantly more food. In fact, it is because we can meet global food needs using less land that we are able to decouple agricultural land use from food production. This trend can go much further and faster. Recognizing that today is Food, Agriculture, and Water Day at COP29, here is a way to make that happen.

To speed up this decoupling, we must allow land to be returned to nature, where it provides critical ecosystem services, like reducing soil erosion and increasing water quality and year-round stream flow. In the environmental world, the strategy has long been to protect nature and biodiversity. Goals have been set for 30x30 (30% of land protected by 2030) or 50x50 (50% of land protected by 2050). This is important work, but it has faced an uphill battle in the face of the perception that governments need to expand the amount of land used to increase food production.

The overall trend of more production on less land suggests a new way forward, one that is faster and more scalable than ever before. An increasing amount of data shows the positive environmental impact of taking marginal land out of production. An example in the US has been documented for 40 years in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to idle land for 10 years that is highly erodible, on steep slopes, or in riparian areas. Over 40 years, the program paid to take 8% of land out of production in the US. As a result, the soil erosion rate for the entire country declined by 50%.

The focus of the CRP was to reduce production to avoid allegations of dumping product onto global markets. While it failed at that — production increased, in fact — it did provide environmental services.. (On the downside, the CRP required producers to mow the land each year. If they had not, the land would have sequestered much more above-ground carbon.)

Another factor affecting farmland over time was the movement of rural populations to cities. Sometimes they were drawn by jobs, education, quality of life, etc. In other instances, populations were pushed out of rural areas. Mechanization increased the amount of land that could brought into cultivation with less labor. In both instances, however, the land that was left was not taken out of production; it was attached to other properties to make larger farms.

Today, many areas of the world are arid and have been over-farmed for decades. Climate change is exacerbating the situation, and farmers are moving off the land to find jobs so that they can feed their families. A significant number of the immigrants to the US are from Central America, where they were farmers but can no longer grow corn or coffee.

The UN has estimated that 1 billion people or more will be displaced from areas most affected by drought and other impacts of climate change. Many of those displaced will be farmers and their families. That land will be abandoned.

Perhaps the biggest movement from the land will be caused by aggregation of holdings into larger and increasingly mechanized farms. These farms will be managed more efficiently, with farmers using data to make decisions. They will be much more likely to retire degraded land than those who degraded it. Research in Brazil in 2001 found that when SLC Agricola and other producers bought degraded pastureland in the Cerrado, they set aside 30-40%, which they knew could not be used for production. Some planted trees but generally they just left it alone.

Finally, half of all farmers globally are 54 or older, and half of all ranchers are 64 or older. A large number, perhaps most, of each group do not have a succession plan — in fact their children have moved away and have children of their own. Most are small-scale producers, and many don’t have the money to invest in modernizing their production and making it more resilient.

If it were possible to pay farmers to stop farming unproductive land, more would be taken out of production, improving environmental services and over time bringing back nature.

Taking land out of production, simply retiring it, will restore environmental services rather quickly. And though it does not automatically or immediately increase production on what remains, it does reduce erosion and can increase pollinators, which also increases production. Most important, though, it allows producers to double down on their better land. They produce more and reduce input use, which generates higher profits.

If markets existed for carbon sequestration, water quality, year-round stream flow, environmental services, or pollination, producers or those that remain on the land could have a source of income. Every farmer has land that is marginal. Imagine if they could use that land to produce environmental services that had buyers. Governments will have to see the value and make this happen.

Globally, we use about 4.8 billion hectares to produce food — about 3 billion for pasture and about 1.8 billion for crops. If we set a target of retiring 5% (240 million hectares) of farmland by 2030 and 10% (480 million) by 2050, we could increase total production on what remains, and reduce absolutely 20-40% of GHG emissions as well as other key impacts of agriculture globally. Think about it.