Land Use and Food Security from Theory to Empirical Exploration

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About this Research Topic

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Background

Land use and food system dynamics are inherently interconnected across multiple spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. In Amazonia and Africa, cropland expansion occurred at alarming rates through deforestation. In Southeast and East Asia, cropland was both encroached by urbanization and replaced by planted trees. In eastern Europe, the abandonment of agricultural land was ubiquitous following conflicts. Both the land system and the food system, as well as their relationships, can be altered by a variety of driving factors. The changing climate such as rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and the frequent extreme events are putting food security at risk. The COVID-19 pandemic and the trade war further complicate the situation, disrupting food supply chains and creating devastating effects on countries from both import and export sides. As the conflicts between increasing world population and finite land resources continue to escalate, the global food system will be restructured in the future. Reexamining food security and land-use dynamics under these multiple overlapping crises is crucial for making agriculture more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.

The nexus between land use and food security is complex and vast, which encompasses multiple domains, measures, and means of investigation and interpretation. To explore and examine options to improve food yield in a sustainable manner whilst maintaining land use sustainability, this Research Topic seeks to shed light on the two-way interactions between the dynamics of food systems and the consequences of these interactions for the climate, ecosystems, and social systems, including their economic and cultural dimensions at different spatial scales-household, regional, and/or even global levels.

We welcome both Original Research and Review papers focusing on theoretical and empirical exploration on the interactions between land use and food security within the complex contexts from local to global scales. Potential topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:

1. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the impacts of land use change on food systems

2. Exploring crop diversification strategies for sustainable food provision

3. Testing how formal and informal institutions affect food security through land reforms

4. Understanding trade-offs and synergies between social, economic and environmental goals for sustainable agricultural intensification at different time and spatial scales

5. Investigating how land use changes in relation to rural out-migration affects food security

6. Modeling and predicting land use changes by including food systems dynamics as the major driver

7. Trad-off analysis between the economic benefits and environmental effects of agricultural production

8. Exploring interactions between land use change and food security dynamics and projecting their future trajectories under various climate scenarios

9. Methodologies for modeling feedbacks between land and food systems with human decision-making such as multi-agent or agent-based approaches

10. Analyzing the impacts of land use conflicts on food provision and seeking for the solutions coordinating multiple stakeholders

11. Forecasting the dynamics of “climate-land-water-food” nexus under different development situations, or scenarios

Keywords: Land use, Food security, Land system, Food system, Land management

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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