title: Global agriculture and carbon trade-offs.
abstract: Feeding a growing and increasingly affluent world will require expanded agricultural production, which may require converting grasslands and forests into cropland. Such conversions can reduce carbon storage, habitat provision, and other ecosystem services, presenting difficult societal trade-offs. In this paper, we use spatially explicit data on agricultural productivity and carbon storage in a global analysis to find where agricultural extensification should occur to meet growing demand while minimizing carbon emissions from land use change. Selective extensification saves ∼ 6 billion metric tons of carbon compared with a business-as-usual approach, with a value of approximately $1 trillion (2012 US dollars) using recent estimates of the social cost of carbon. This type of spatially explicit geospatial analysis can be expanded to include other ecosystem services and other industries to analyze how to minimize conflicts between economic development and environmental sustainability.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Applied Economics and The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA 22203 Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108; and.
authors.forename: Justin Andrew
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Departments of Applied Economics and Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108; and.
authors.forename: Carlisle Ford
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Runge
authors.affiliation: Departments of Applied Economics and.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Senauer
authors.affiliation: Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108; and.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Foley
authors.affiliation: Departments of Applied Economics and Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108; and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, and polasky@umn.edu.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Polasky
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000639:trends; D018533:Biomass; D057965:Carbon Sequestration; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000254:growth & development; D017753:Ecosystem; D006801:Humans
keywords: cropland expansion; food security
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