According to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the historically developed food production systems do not reflect the biophysical potential of our ecosystems.

The study shows that food is not produced at places where that would be most efficient in terms of area use, water consumption, and CO2 emissions.

Temperate latitudes would have to serve as cropland rather than pastures. This would compensate area loss due to the reforestation of tropical and boreal forests. The wide and open tropical and subtropical savannas and grasslands would have to be used as pastures and for food production. The researchers modeled optimized land use for climate conditions of an optimistic scenario and a presently more realistic climate change scenario for the near and far future (2033 to 2042 and 2090 to 2099).

Spatial reorganization alone would increase food production by an average of 83%, water availability by 8%, and CO2 storage capacity by 3%. These increases would be even higher, if one of the three parameters would be given priority over the remaining 2%.

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