Agricultural activities are a major driver of habitat loss and ecosystem degradation, while also demanding large amounts of water and contributing to nutrient runoff that pollutes rivers, lakes and coastal waters. According to professor Francesco Cherubini, director of NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme, agriculture in Europe is already highly intensive in many regions, leaving limited scope for further yield gains simply by increasing inputs on existing fields. Instead, he and his colleagues argue that the key lies in phasing out cultivation on land that is least suitable for crop production and concentrating efforts on more fertile, better structured areas.
The NTNU team combined European satellite data with agricultural statistics to identify cropland used for cereals and vegetables across the continent, excluding grasslands used for animal feed. They focused on plots with steep terrain, low yields, or small and scattered fields that are costly to manage and often overlap with valuable habitats. Their analysis, published in Nature Communications, shows that Europe has roughly 24 million hectares of such low-productivity agricultural land, representing about 14 percent of crop production areas in Europe, including Norway.
These sub optimal areas are not only expensive to farm but also frequently coincide with regions that host important or threatened species. The study finds that about two thirds of this land faces risks of further soil degradation, while around half overlaps with priority biodiversity zones. By allowing natural vegetation to regrow on these marginal fields and shifting production toward more favourable land, the researchers estimate that agricultural greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by up to 40 percent while pressure on biodiversity could fall by 20 percent, all without reducing total food production.
Allowing trees and other natural vegetation to return to poorly performing fields improves the carbon balance by increasing carbon stocks in both biomass and soils. Cherubini notes that trees' root systems help retain nutrients, reduce erosion and build soil organic matter, which in turn improves long term fertility. At the same time, lost production from abandoned marginal land can be compensated through targeted intensification in the best agricultural areas and through carefully managed extensification in regions with small, fragmented plots.
Extensification in this context means using less fertilizer, fewer pesticides and less labour on certain lands while deliberately increasing the presence of natural features such as trees and hedgerows within the farmed landscape. The study indicates that, when combined with better crop choices and management, such extensive systems can still increase yields by around 10 to 20 percent in suitable regions. In Europe, that generally implies placing more emphasis on high yielding crops such as maize, wheat and barley where they are agroclimatically appropriate, while still basing decisions on local experience and targeting local markets.
The researchers underline that these changes demand coordination among European countries, because the approach implies reducing intensive crop production in steep mountain areas in Southern and Eastern Europe while upgrading and adjusting production systems in more suitable lowland regions. Implementation would therefore require cross border planning, policy support and mechanisms to manage distributional effects on farmers and rural communities in different regions.
Norway illustrates both the potential and the constraints of this strategy. One third of the country's arable land delivers only about 20 percent of its crop output, placing Norway high on the European list for the share of low productivity land. At the same time, professor Gunnar Austrheim of the NTNU University Museum points out that Norway is an exceptional case because two thirds of its agricultural area is devoted to grass production, leaving relatively little land for crops and reducing the country's weight in the European balance.
Austrheim notes that some steps to restore natural environments have already begun in Norway, including projects to rehabilitate wetlands, moorlands and forests. He argues that seeing marginal farmland as a resource for climate and biodiversity policy can help reframe debates over land use, since some land has already gone out of production. Natural regrowth of trees and the reestablishment of wetlands increase carbon storage and support a wider range of species, adding ecological value to areas once farmed intensively.
However, the researchers also acknowledge that social and cultural considerations play an important role in decisions about whether to continue farming low productivity areas. In Norway and other countries, some marginal regions are maintained for reasons related to settlement patterns, cultural landscapes or local identity, even when they are expensive to manage and heavily subsidized. Austrheim emphasizes that the study does not suggest abandoning all such land but instead highlights the untapped potential for targeted land reallocation that respects these broader values.
The work is also linked to international commitments. Norway, like other countries, has obligations under the 2022 UN Biodiversity Agreement to make agriculture more environmentally friendly. These include halving nutrient surpluses, cutting pesticide use by half and restoring 30 percent of degraded natural areas. The NTNU study demonstrates how planned shifts between intensification and extensification across different land types can contribute to meeting these goals, by freeing up space for nature while maintaining food security.
Overall, the researchers conclude that strategic reallocation of cropland use, combined with changes in farming practices and crop choices, offers a realistic pathway to align European agriculture with climate and biodiversity objectives. By focusing intensive production where land is most suitable and allowing natural vegetation to reclaim marginal fields, Europe can significantly cut emissions and protect ecosystems without sacrificing the amount of food produced. The authors see their work as a feasibility study that can support policymakers as they design future agricultural and land use policies across the continent.
Research Report:Reconciling crop production, climate action and nature conservation in Europe by agricultural intensification and extensification
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