Cropland redistribution to marginal lands undermines environmental sustainability

ABSTRACT Cropland redistribution to marginal land has been reported worldwide; however, the resulting impacts on environmental sustainability have not been investigated sufficiently. Here we investigated the environmental impacts of cropland redistribution in China. As a result of urbanization-induced loss of high-quality croplands in south China (∼8.5 t ha–1), croplands expanded to marginal lands in northeast (∼4.5 t ha–1) and northwest China (∼2.9 t ha–1) during 1990–2015 to pursue food security. However, the reclamation in these low-yield and ecologically vulnerable zones considerably undermined local environmental sustainability, for example increasing wind erosion (+3.47%), irrigation water consumption (+34.42%), fertilizer use (+20.02%) and decreasing natural habitats (−3.11%). Forecasts show that further reclamation in marginal lands per current policies would exacerbate environmental costs by 2050. The future cropland security risk will be remarkably intensified because of the conflict between food production and environmental sustainability. Our research suggests that globally emerging reclamation of marginal lands should be restricted and crop yield boost should be encouraged for both food security and environmental benefits.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  National Science Review

• Publication date

  2021-05-22

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Economics, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1093/nsr/nwab091PMID 35070327PMCID 8776548
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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