Experiments in globalisation, food security and land use decision making.

Area of Science:

• Agricultural economics
• Environmental science
• Land use modeling

Background:

• Globalisation of trade influences land use, food production, and environmental conditions worldwide.
• Specialisation based on productive capacity can maximize efficiency, but is often hindered by food security policies.
• Land manager responses to economic and environmental stimuli are variable and can be economically irrational.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of food security policies and agricultural market globalisation on land use patterns.
• To analyze how diverse land manager behaviours influence land use outcomes under different policy scenarios.

Main Methods:

• Modeling of land use patterns under various scenarios of agricultural market globalisation.
• Inclusion of diverse land manager behaviours, such as variations in production, tenacity, land use intensity, and multi-functionality.
• Simulation of stylized food security policies and their interactions with market globalisation.

Main Results:

• A system focused solely on regional food security shows lower overall production than a fully globalized system.
• Certain land manager behaviours can mitigate the production differences between food-secure and globalized systems.
• Variations in land use intensity and multi-functionality significantly enhance food and ecosystem service provision in both systems.
• Emergent behaviors include land abandonment, slowed land use change, and land use fragmentation or concentration.

Conclusions:

• Land manager behaviour is a critical factor in determining land use outcomes, irrespective of globalisation or food security policies.
• Optimizing land use requires considering both economic drivers and diverse, often irrational, human behaviours.
• Policies should account for the complex interplay between market forces, food security objectives, and land manager responses to achieve desired environmental and production goals.