Emilia-Romagna has been a highly populated area since ancient times.

Inhabitants over the centuries

have radically altered the landscape, building cities, reclaiming wetlands, and establishing large
agricultural areas. All these transformations in past centuries changed the aspect of the region,
converting large natural areas to cultivation, up until the 1960s. The trend then changed, and
agricultural lands began giving way to residential and industrial areas. The increase of urban-industrial
areas continued at very high rates until the end of the 2010s. In the same period, hilly and mountainous
areas saw an increase in the registration of semi-natural areas, because of the abandonment of
agricultural lands.

Land use changes can have strong effects on ecological functions. Human interactions such as
agriculture, forestation and deforestation affect soil function, e.g. food and other biomass production,
storing, filtering and transformation, habitat and gene pool.[16]

In the Emilia-Romagna plain, which represents half of the region and where three quarters of the
population of the region live, the agricultural land area has been reduced by 157 km2 while urban and
industrial areas have increased to over 130 km2 between 2003 and 2008. The impact of land use and
particularly of the urbanisation of the Emilia-Romagna plain during this period has had some strong
consequences in the economical and ecological assessment of the region. The loss of arable land is
equivalent to a permanent loss of the capacity to feed 440,000 persons per year from resources grown
within the region. The increased water runoff due to soil sealing requires adaptation measures for river
and irrigation canals such as the building of retention basins, at a total cost estimated in the order of
billions of euros.[17]

In 2000 there were 103,700 farm holdings and in 2010 there were 73,470, or a -29.2% loss in holdings
for the region. The total utilised agricultural area (UAA) was 1,114,590 hectares (2,754,200 acres) in
2000 and 1,064,210 hectares (2,629,700 acres) in 2014 for a loss of 4.5%, indicating a downturn of
smaller farm ownership. During this same timeframe there was a 14.5% decrease in the farm labor
workforce