Redesigning the European food system will reduce agricultural land by 44% while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture by 70%. This reduction is possible with the current consumption of animal protein. If we also reduce the amount of animal protein we eat, replacing it with plant-based protein, land use could be reduced by 60% and emissions by 81%.
I think that issue is embedded in my statement, even if its subtle.
To me, this issue is and has always been on of landcover/ land use planning. Specifically, we allow markets to determine land use by immediate market value, rather than long term costs and values to the system. Because of this, humans have been supplanting the most valuable most aerable farmland with dedicated residential land for centuries. Basically, because the land is flat and easy to build on.
Why is the land flat? And why was it dedicated to agriculture where previously people did not reside on it?
Because its a flood plane. It gets inundated and sediment (nutrients) deposited annually. Because we allowed lazy humans and their builders to value it for its flatness more than its ability to grow crops, we now need to both a) move to more marginal/ less sustainable land for crop growing and b) develop some kind of flood control mechanism because the place we idiots decided to put the houses floods every year. Now we’ve fundamentally altered the biogeochemical cycling of the area because it no longer has certain hydroglocial or nutrient inputs.
Stick the houses on the hill sides where its difficult to build but also difficult to do productive agriculture. Its far easier to live on a hill side than it is to do farming where you can’t/ shouldn’t.