Implications of Alternative Agricultural Productivity Growth Assumptions on Land Management, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Mitigation Potential

Future productivity growth in agriculture is necessary to satisfy rising food,fiber,and bioenergy demands, and to contribute to global environmental objectives, including greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation.Conventional logic suggests that improved productivity per-unit area (e.g. from improved seed varieties of other scientific advances not controlled by the farmer) can spare additional agricultural land expansion, intensification on existing cropland, and land degradation (Burney, Davis, and Lobell 2010; Hertel 2011).Such changes can reduce net GHG emissions from the global agricultural and forestry system.However, this inference does not hold universally because of the complex relationship between exogenous productivity advancements, endogenous land management responses, and landscape heterogeneity.Consequently, the relationship between agricultural technology growth, land use, and GHG emissions is ill-defined in the literature, especially for coupled crop and livestock systems in regions with historically high levels of land use change.