Impact of land-take on the land resource base for crop production in the European Union

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.06.103Get rights and content

Abstract

Spatial analyses of cropland productivity levels and land use data from 2000 and 2006 were performed to assess the loss of cropland resources for biomass production of the European Union due to land take. Productivity loss in administrative regions was calculated on the basis of the extent and quality of agricultural land resources converted to artificial surfaces. Data show that while all EU member states experience constant decrease of their production capacity, there are also considerable differences among countries and regions. Based on the analysis of 24 member states, the EU lost 0.27% of its cropland and 0.26% of its crop productive potential in the period between 2000 and 2006 due to land take. The loss of agricultural land during the study period was the highest in the Netherlands, which lost 1.57% of its crop production potential within six years. The figures are quite alarming for Cyprus (0.84%), Ireland (0.77%) and Spain (0.49%) as well. In metropolitan areas of Barcelona, Berlin, Bratislava, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Milan, and Vienna infrastructural investment occurred on the higher quality cropland while Budapest, Paris, and Warsaw spread their urban growth to areas of less productive cropland. Denmark had to face the largest loss of its food production capacity for each citizen, exceeding the equivalent of 4 kg capita 1 year 1 of wheat, followed by Ireland with more than the equivalent of 3 kg wheat and Spain, Netherlands, Hungary, Cyprus and France all above 2 kg loss per capita, annually. The EU lost an amount of cropland production potential equal to approximately 700,000 t of wheat grain, annually, in the study period. Results highlight the following general trends: (i) land conversion from different land cover types to artificial surfaces follows the historic trends in Europe with continuing consumption of more productive areas from its land resources; (ii) the conversion rate of croplands to artificial surfaces is growing with increased population growth; (iii) with the growing rate of population increase, increasingly higher quality croplands are converted to artificial surfaces, while with faster rates of population decline increasingly poorer quality croplands are converted; (iv) countries with more developed economies generally convert cropland at a higher speed; and (v) there is a negative correlation between annual economic growth and the rate of cropland conversion.

Highlights

► 0.26% of the productive potential of the EU was lost between 2000 and 2006. ► Most of the metropolitan areas of Europe expanded on prime land of their regions. ► Countries with more advanced economies convert cropland at higher speed. ► A negative correlation between GDP growth and cropland conversion was found. ► Per capita annual crop productivity loss is expressed for each member state.

Introduction

Food security in Europe is based on the crop output of its land resources. Land resources also contribute to the supply of biofuels and other raw materials, provide a platform for most human activities and secure a series of environmental services (Blum, 2005, Bouma, 2006). The performance of these land functions—which are often carried out at the same place at the same time—is conditioned by ecological and socio-economic factors. Socio-economic factors influence land availability for food production, land use allocation, and land use efficiency. Ecological factors not only set conditions for the use potential of land, including productivity potential of agricultural areas but also set limits to environmentally acceptable inputs. Optimization of land utilization to secure adequate biomass production for food, feed, and energy in Europe while keeping land provision for other uses and maintaining good environmental status is in the focus of European and national policies (CEC, 2005, CEC, 2006, EC, 2011, Dwyer, 2011). The progress in the understanding of dynamics in multifunctional landscapes (O'Farell and Anderson, 2010) and the existence of operation monitoring systems in many European countries to detect land use change and soil sealing (EC, 2011) provide tools to address the problem of land take for policy planning and implementation.

However, current trends show that the principles laid down in the EU's Thematic Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources toward more sustainable production patterns in Europe (CEC, 2005) are far from achieved. On the contrary, the conversion of land resources toward artificial surfaces is ongoing, consistently decreasing the availability of fertile land for future generations (EC, 2011). According to recent studies artificial surfaces have been growing, from the baseline year of 2000 with an average of 3.4% in 36 European countries until 2006 (EEA, 2010). This figure illustrates the significant loss of land potential for biomass production in Europe. In addition to the loss of productive potential, land-take has a series of environmental consequences, ranging from biodiversity decline to reduced potential for carbon sequestration (Prokop et al., 2011). In recognition of the problems created by land conversion, the EU has announced its resource efficiency roadmap (CEC, 2011) setting a target of no net land-take in the European Union by the year 2050. However, the principle of sustainability also implies that low quality land should be subject of conversion to artificial surfaces, while compensating it with land of higher quality. Strategic land use planning and environmental impact assessment often lack elements of soil quality; therefore, the soil quality component is rarely integrated into the policy-making processes either. This is partly due to the data availability on local to national scales (Jones et al., 2005), partly to complexities of soil and land qualities (Blum et al., 2004, Karlen et al., 2001), and partly to lack of expertise in the planning circuits (Tzilivakis et al., 2005). However, there are attempts to provide integrated tools to include land quality in land use planning at local and regional scales (Tóth and Németh, 2011, Vrščaj et al., 2008).

In the current study we aimed to provide new data and knowledge of trends of cropland resource decline caused by land take in a spatially explicit manner in the EU and to quantify the quality (productivity) of croplands lost in the conversion to artificial surfaces. To achieve this aim, we analyzed the extent and productivity of croplands that have been converted to artificial surfaces during the seven year study period. We used the following land take definition of the European Commission (EC, 2011): “Land take is the increase of artificial surfaces (housing areas; green urban areas; industrial, commercial and transport units; road and rail networks; etc.) over time.”

A comprehensive assessment of change in cropland quality (Tóth et al., 2007) was out of the scope of the current research; however, we aimed to provide an overview of changing crop production capacities in the EU member states due to land take. While land take from croplands is the focus of this paper, preliminary analysis on land take from other land cover types is also provided. With additional analysis of population and economic data the dependency and characteristics of land take on underlying socioeconomic factors were also assessed.

Section snippets

The SoilProd data

The spatially explicit Soil Productivity Model for Europe (SoilProd; Tóth et al., 2011), developed at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Ispra, was used in the current study. The SoilProd model is developed to support planning and monitoring of resource use efficiency and sustainability of agricultural land use. According to the underlying principle of the SoilProd model, biomass production of a given soil depends on geographical location (climatic-, hydrological- and terrain

Land take trends in the EU between 2000 and 2006

The European Union, based on the analysis of 24 member states, lost 0.27% of its cropland due to conversion to artificial surfaces in the period between 2000 and 2006. The rate of land take was highest in croplands followed by grasslands, plantations, and forests, respectively (Table 3). This sequence of land take rates suggests that land conversion to artificial surfaces follows the historic trends also in the 21st century with continuing conversion of more productive land. The historic trend

Conclusions

The loss of agricultural land due to conversion to artificial surfaces is a common problem in the European Union, of which all regions are affected to a greater or lesser extent. Simultaneously, there are also considerable differences in EU member states both in the speed of land-take and in the quality of the land taken out from crop production in favor of artificial surfaces.

Spatial analyses of the land productivity and land use data show that the EU is experiencing a consistent decrease in

Acknowledgments

The author sincerely thanks Katalin Bódis and Éva Ivits for the support they provided in the GIS application of the SoilProd model during this study. Comments and suggestions from anonymous reviewers provided very valuable input to improve the quality of the paper. Special thanks are due to Martha Dunbar and András Vincze who revised and corrected the text of the manuscript from a linguistic point of view.

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