Crop intensification, land use, and on-farm energy-use efficiency during the worldwide spread of the green revolution

Abstract

We analyzed crop production, physical inputs, and land use at the country level to assess technological changes behind the threefold increase in global crop production from 1961 to 2014. We translated machinery, fuel, and fertilizer to embedded energy units that, when summed up, provided a measure of agricultural intensification (human subsidy per hectare) for crops in the 58 countries responsible for 95% of global production. Worldwide, there was a 137% increase in input use per hectare, reaching 13 EJ, or 2.6% of the world's primary energy supply, versus only a 10% increase in land use. Intensification was marked in Asia and Latin America, where input-use levels reached those that North America and Europe had in the earlier years of the period; the increase was more accentuated, irrespective of continent, for the 12 countries with mostly irrigated production. Half of the countries (28/58), mainly developed ones, had an average subsidy >5 GJ/ha/y (with fertilizers accounting for 27% in 1961 and 45% in 2014), with most of them (23/28) using about the same area or less than in 1961 (net land sparing of 31 Mha). Most of the remaining countries (24/30 with inputs <5 GJ/ha/y), mainly developing ones, increased their cropped area (net land extensification of 135 Mha). Overall, energy-use efficiency (crop output/inputs) followed a U-shaped trajectory starting at about 3 and finishing close to 4. The prospects of a more sustainable intensification are discussed, and the inadequacy of the land-sparing model expectation of protecting wilderness via intensified agriculture is highlighted.

Agricultural Development and Land Use Change in India: A Scenario Analysis of Trade‐Offs Between UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

“…The scenarios modeled here use growth trends that are in line with generally accepted yield trends that will not exceed biophysical limits (Robinson et al, 2014;Rosegrant et al, 2017). In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, there are critical land use considerations (Pellegrini & Fernández, 2018) that we generally will not encounter in India. In these other regions, the land use effects of agricultural intensification need to be addressed through appropriate policy measures (Kreidenweis et al, 2018;Popp et al, 2017).…”

Implementing land-based mitigation to achieve the Paris Agreement in Europe requires food system transformation

“…In the IAP, the role of biotechnology and fertiliser use improvement were considered in the technological improvement for yield gain across crops. Yet, it is also important to note that the EU had reached its peak of fertiliser use intensification in 1961 [76]. Also, the average yield gap (difference between actual gain and estimated potential gain) in Europe for cereal crops is about 42%, with a range between 10% and 70% depending on the region, making simulated yield improvements of up to 75% by the 2050s in the scenarios reported here questionable.…”

A quantitative analysis of intensification in the ethnographic record.

“…In other words, the ratio between output E out and input E in decreases as intensity I increases. This assumption is a cornerstone of social evolutionary theory [1-5, 50, 57, 58] and has been employed in various ways by influential scholars working on the development and intensification of agriculture in anthropology and archaeology [29,[34][35][36][37][38][59][60][61][62][63], economics [64,65], geography [11,66], and energy studies [10,51,[67][68][69]. Let the productivity of a food production system E 0 at a given level of intensity I be defined as…”