In this paper, researchers from a number of UK and US research institutions explore the potential for land sparing as a greenhouse gas (GHG) offsetting strategy – that is, by increasing crop and livestock yields so as to enable agricultural land to be freed up and used for habitat restoration (for example) an enable carbon sequestration. 

This paper discusses the use of food waste as a feed source for pigs reared for pork in the EU, the current policy landscape and implications for agricultural land use, profits and pork production of using waste as feed.  The authors find that re-legalising the use of food waste as pig feed in the EU could spare 1.8 million hectares of global agricultural land, improve profitability for many farmers, and produce pork of high quality.

Research published in Nature Climate Change shows that accelerated erosion due to agricultural management is a major threat to food security and soil sustainability. Erosion is a natural process that continually shapes the land surface. The removal of soil also removes carbon contained in that soil. With erosion removing top soil it removes the layer of the soil that has the greatest concentration of carbon.

This report entitled “Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective” is the fourth in a series of annual reports published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  It provides an assessment of how climate change may have affected the strength and likelihood of individual extreme events.

This report by the Science-Policy Partnership Network synthesizes current scientific information to help oil palm policy makers make land-use decisions which jointly meet biodiversity and carbon conservation agendas. The Science-Policy Partnership Network is led by University of York and was set up by the ‘Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Oil palm Research’ (SEnSOR) project with funding from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and includes representatives from oil palm growers, consumer goods companies, NGOs, government and the RSPO.

New research from Cambridge University finds that providing farmers and farmer industries with financial incentives to mitigate agriculture’s impact on the environment positively effects greenhouse gas reduction and increased biodiversity at the aggregate level. The study analysed investment in two key types of agri-environment schemes: measures to spare land for conservation, and measures (such as taxation) intended to limit fertiliser use. The research team plotted this against national trends for farmland bird populations and emissions from synthetic fertiliser across the US, Canada, Australia and Europe.

A new paper published in Global Environmental Change analyses 50 years of data from FAO (from 1961 to 2011) to try to understand the drivers for global agricultural land use change. Pasture forms the largest component of agricultural land globally, but previous research on agricultural land use has focused disproportionately on the role of arable crops. 

This very interesting paper, co-authored by FCRN member Ken Giller, pays serious attention to the question of what a family farm actually is and the assumptions that people make about them. Taking as its starting point for exploration the FAO’s assertion that family farms are important as a means of eradicating poverty, providing food and achieving sustainable development, it explores the characteristics and patterns of family farming in countries as diverse as the United States, Netherlands, China, Brazil, Ethiopia and India.

Some scientists have suggested that Africa's wet savannahs could be ideal for growing crops needed to meet the growing demand for food and bioenergy. In this paper however, researchers from Princeton University and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) warn that farmland conversion of these savannahs will come at a much higher cost than previously thought.