Agricultural land abandonment is a Global Land-Use  Change Process!

The world is facing a looming scarcity of land necessary to secure agricultural commodities production and experience competition from other land uses. At the same time, evidence shows agricultural land abandonment is a global land change process with a recent spread of abandonment in the Global South. 
 
        Research on agricultural land abandonment is disproportional compared to other land change processes, such as deforestation and agricultural expansion. At the same time, agricultural land abandonment has strong implications for the environment and societal well-being, including food security.
 
   There are many challenges to understanding the agricultural land abandonment process, for instance, stemming from the fuzzy definition of abandonment, the ability to measure abandonment patterns, the diversity of factors driving agricultural land abandonment, and its environmental consequences.

Through seminars, thematic workshops, reports, and research papers, our "Agricultural Land Abandonment as a Global Land-Use Change Phenomenon" Working Group established via Global Land Program will advance our understanding agricultural land abandonment process, namely, but not exclusively:

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1. Role of individual decision-making and behavioral mechanisms regarding agricultural land abandonment;

2. Progressing on mapping agricultural land abandonment;

3. Role of rural-urban transition in the relationship to abandonment;

4. An alternative to agriculture reuse of formerly cultivated lands;

5. Policies to mitigate, but also foster retirement of cultivated lands;

6. Environmental  and societal impacts of agricultural land abandonment, including food security;

7. Agricultural land abandonment - food security interlinks.

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