Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Land Use Policy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

A succinct review and analysis of drivers and impacts of agricultural land

transformations in Asia
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Hayama, Japan

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper identifies major transformations in agricultural land both in terms of land use and land-use changes,
Agriculture analyses major drivers and impacts, and describes the major policy interventions to arrest negative trends. The
Land transformations rapidly growing population and their needs constitute one of the major drivers of land-use changes in the Asia
Intensification
region. Agricultural productivity has increased at a slightly faster pace than population growth in Asia through
Drivers
Pressures
agricultural intensification. Intensive farming practices have put pressure on ecosystems leading to declining
total factor productivity, land degradation, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, and GHG emissions. Policy measures
to address unsustainable land transformations have been minimal and countries are yet to be successful in
arresting the negative trends. Through coordinated land management and integrated land decision support
systems, countries can address food-fuel conflicts, arrest negative environmental consequences, enhance rural
prosperity, and achieve sustainable development.

1. Introduction
The land is one of the major natural resources of Asian countries and
agriculture is still the single largest user of land in Asia (FAO, 2016).
Agricultural land plays an important role in delivering the food, climate,
and human security goals of countries in Asia and any unsustainable
land use could undermine the ability to achieve these goals. The agri­
cultural land in Asia has been undergoing significant transformations
(Laborde et al., 2019). These transformations are largely unsustainable
(Arfanuzzaman and Dahiya, 2019) and are driven by various pressures
operating on the land (Vadrevu et al., 2017). These unsustainable
agricultural transformations including agricultural intensification are on
the rise in all Asian countries irrespective of their developmental status
(UNEP, 2016). Agricultural land transformations in Asia are character­
ized by their rapid changes (Vadrevu et al., 2019) with rapid impacts on
the socio-economic aspects of the communities and the environment
(Hamidov et al., 2016).
Understanding the impacts of land-use changes on agricultural land
can help to manage the land sustainably. Several efforts have been made
to present the land-use changes in the published literature. While several
of these studies utilize remote-sensing applications, they are largely
either based on sub-regional levels (e.g. Leisz et al., 2009) or at the
national level (e.g. Hinz et al., 2020; Meiyappan et al., 2017). These
studies are though very informative, they tend to be complex in
understanding, are often not accessible to the policy community and
suffer from limited time-series data (Saah et al., 2019). The regional
environmental synthesis exercises including that of Environmental
Outlook (GEO) for Asia-Pacific though provides a good overview of
environmental changes. However, the time taken to produce such syn­
thesis works often delays the communication of important environ­
mental changes to relevant stakeholders. Though there are calls to
produce environmental status synthesis reports focusing on specific
sectors in short intervals, efforts are yet to produce a sectoral synthesis
for land-use transformations in Asia with frequent updates (King, 2019).
For the above reasons, this paper presents a hybrid approach of
analyzing the secondary data on land-use changes available from
various sources and presents the trends in combination with a review of
literature on the state of major agricultural land transformations in Asia.
The main objective of the paper is to provide an easily accessible anal­
ysis of land transformations in Asia and to provide available evidence on
drivers behind these land transformations. To meet these objectives, the
paper identifies important drivers and trade-offs countries are facing due
to land-use changes and identifies policy measures to arrest negative
trends. As official consultations for the UNEP GEO-7 have already
begun, these results presented in the paper could provide an important
input to the GEO process.

E-mail address: prabhakar@iges.or.jp.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105238
Received 5 April 2020; Received in revised form 24 September 2020; Accepted 13 December 2020
Available online 29 December 2020
0264-8377/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar
2. Methodology
This paper discusses the major agricultural land transformations in
Asia, analyses important drivers behind the transformations, presents a
discussion on socio-economic and environmental trade-offs, and pre­
sents a succinct review of policy options to ease pressure on agricultural
land in Asia. For doing so, the paper takes a hybrid approach i.e. the
paper largely takes the approach of the literature review while supple­
menting the review with the original analysis of data from secondary
sources. Such a hybrid approach is increasingly been adopted in several
environmental assessment processes including that of the UNEP GEO
reports. The data was largely drawn from the Food and Agriculture
Organization Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) for the years
2002–2015 during which the data on agriculture production and land
use is available for most Asian countries. The data used for analysis was
presented in Table 1.
Wherever necessary, a simple statistical correlation analysis was
performed to show the relationship between two variables in the dis­
cussion. For example, the statistical correlation between agricultural
land and the urban population was performed for major Asian countries
to visualize how the change in urban population has resulted in a change
in the agricultural land. Wherever relevant, the trends were presented
using simple statistical measures such as % change from the base year
2002, using bar graphs. The selection of these methods is in line to make
the analysis most accessible to a wide range of readers including for their
application in limited data and skill environments.
The PCA analysis involves a statistical orthogonal transformation of
correlated data into a set of uncorrelated data. The Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) has been widely used as a statistical tool for analyzing
the land-use changes, both using the remote sensing techniques as well
as in non-spatial approaches for statistically analyzing the data (e.g.
Deng et al., 2008; Fung and LeDrew, 1987). The PCA was carried out
using the data series between 2002 and 2015 using the following vari­
ables a) agricultural land area in a country (ha), b) GDP PPP (constant
2011 international $), c) chemical inputs used in agricultural production
(fertilizers and pesticides), d) percentage of agricultural area equipped
for irrigation, e) total population, and f) the percentage of the rural
population. The PCA analysis was done for two country groups i.e. a)
grouping of countries based on the trend in agricultural land (i.e.
increased, no change and decreased), and b) grouping of countries based
on their developmental status using UN classification (i.e. highly
developed economies, medium developed economies and least devel­
oped economies). The number of principal components was decided
based on the slope of the Scree Plot, which indicated that a
two-component analysis is sufficient to explain the variance in the data.
The data were log-transformed to accommodate the wide variation be­
tween countries within the PCA so that the scale differences do not in­
fluence the PCA results (Maadooliat et al., 2015). The PCA was
conducted with an orthogonal Varimax rotation with Kaiser normali­
zation (Shooshtari et al., 2019). Bartlett’s test of sphericity was
Table 1
Data derived from the FAOSTAT for analysing the agricultural land trans­
formations in Asia.
S No Data used
1 Total land area (million hectares)
2 Agricultural land area (million hectares)
3 Area under forest (million hectares)
4 Pesticides per area of crop land in arable and permanent crops (million tons)
5 Fertilizers by major nutrients (tons)
6 % irrigated agriculture (% of total agriculture area)
7 Cereal imports and exports (million tons)
8 Total agricultural production (million tons)
9 Total population (million)
10 Urban population (million) and % urban population
11 Rural population (million)
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Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238
conducted as a test of significance.
While the PCA helps reduce the dimensionality of the data and helps
in explaining the variance in the data with fewer variables, a multiple
linear regression helps in quantifying the relationship between depen­
dent and independent variables (Guillén-Casla et al., 2011; Su et al.,
2020). Hence, a multiple linear regression was also carried out between
the dependent variable agricultural land and independent variables
GDP, agricultural production, total population, rural population, the
area under irrigation, and chemical inputs to quantify the relationship
between these variables. The PCA and the linear regression analysis was
carried out in the SPSS software version 24.
3. Results and discussion
In this section, using a hybrid approach, the results of the review of
literature and the analysis of the secondary data has been presented.
Two kinds of agricultural land transformations can be observed in Asia,
a) agricultural land-use change and b) agricultural intensification. The
earlier refers to the change in land either by conversion of land into
agriculture or away from agriculture. The latter refers to how the agri­
cultural land is managed within its land use category. One kind of
transformation can impact another kind of transformation. For example,
poor management of agricultural land can create more demand for land
to be converted into agriculture to meet the growing food needs of
countries. These two kinds of agricultural land use transformations are
discussed in the sub-sections below. Further, the section also discusses
the drivers of agricultural land use and intensification, socio-economic
and environmental trade-offs, and measures to ease the pressure on
land mainly from the literature review.
3.1. Agricultural land use change
Countries in Asia have witnessed significant transformations in
agricultural land over the past decades. During the period 1961–2015,
the agricultural land remained constant in 8 countries, declined in 10,
and increased in 29 (Fig. 1, based on the data from FAOSTAT (FAO,
2018a,b). The countries that have lost a significant amount of agricul­
tural land include Brunei Darussalam (66.7 % decline compared to
1961), Japan (48 %), Republic of Korea (35.3 %), and Mongolia (24.6
%). The top five countries that have experienced the highest rate of
growth in agricultural land are Malaysia (49.5 %), Vietnam (47.8 %),
United Arab Emirates (44.5 %), and Bhutan (40.7 %).
China (153 Mha), Indonesia (18.6 Mha), and Saudi Arabia (87.2
Mha) have converted vast areas of land into agriculture while Mongolia
(27.8 Mha) and Iran (13.7 Mha) have lost significant agricultural land
during the same period. The source of land differed for countries that
gained agricultural land. A significant amount of agricultural land came
from ‘other land’ categories in China and Saudi Arabia and in Indonesia,
the gain in agricultural land came from forests. Similarly, the agricul­
tural land in Iran and Mongolia either was lost to afforestation or to
other land use categories.
3.2. Agricultural intensification
Agricultural intensification was defined as the degree of yield in­
crease caused by production choices made (Dietrich et al., 2012).
Though crop yields can indicate agricultural intensification, such
interpretation should be done with caution since factors other than
human, such as favorable weather, could contribute to better crop
yields. This in view, trends in agricultural intensification in the paper
have been limited to production factors. The agricultural intensification
can be measured by the amount of land employed to produce a unit
amount of food per unit amount of inputs. Irrigation can drive intensi­
fication by allowing multiple crops in a year, allow the cultivation of
high yielding varieties, use of fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization.
Hence, irrigation alone can serve as a single most important indicator of
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238

Fig. 1. Change in agricultural land in Asia (Green: no change, Red: Declining, Blue: Increasing (Source: Author). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this
figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article).

intensification when the data is not available on other forms of inten­ declined in Japan and the Republic of Korea largely due to a decline in
sification. The data on chemical inputs and % irrigated agriculture agricultural land, and the decline in farming population. Indonesia
(Fig. 2) shows that chemical inputs have significantly increased in recorded the largest increase in chemical use followed by India and
countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. It Bangladesh.

Fig. 2. Trends in agricultural inputs in selected Asian countries, values are for 2015 expressed as % change from 2002 (Source: Author, based on data
from FAOSTAT).

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S.V.R.K. Prabhakar Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238

3.3. Drivers of agricultural land use and intensification presented in Table 2. The following conclusions can be drawn from the
table: a) a common set of drivers can lead to land-use changes and
The term ‘driver’ refers to factors that contribute to the change in the intensification. For example, high economic growth could take pop­
state of land use from one land use category to another one. Drivers can ulations away from agriculture and can further drive agricultural
be categorized as direct or proximate drivers and indirect or underlying intensification due to land aggregation, b) majority of drivers of agri­
causes. Indirect drivers are difficult to identify and quantify as they are cultural intensification are intrinsic to the agriculture sector, c) agri­
pervasive across sectors for which the data has not been well measured cultural intensification is largely driven by irrigation, fertilizers,
and reported. Multiple drivers operate on the agricultural land in the pesticides, high yielding varieties, and farm mechanization, and d)
Asia region and characterizing these drivers is a major challenge due to agricultural intensification has helped farmers to produce for the market
a) feedback connections between drivers (e.g. rapid urbanization and access to markets has also played a key role in agricultural inten­
providing a better quality of life and employment could pull the popu­ sification in Asia. Another set of common drivers for land-use changes
lation out of agriculture), b) non-agriculture drivers are outside the in­ could include farmers’ behaviors in terms of how farmers respond to
fluence of the decisions made within the agriculture sector (e.g. various economic and environmental pressures around them that
infrastructure and energy decisions putting pressure on land), and c) determine their land-use practices (Douglas, 2006). For example, high
drivers at the local level may not be captured at the national and economic pressures can push farmers to cultivate on slopes contributing
regional level due to masking effect of other drivers (averaged out) to land degradation (Liu and Qian, 2020).
Several drivers have been reported in the literature, a few are
3.3.1. Drivers of land use changes
Commercial agriculture has been reported as one of the important
Table 2
Drivers reported in literature for land use change and agricultural intensification drivers of land conversion to agriculture (FAO, 2016). Mechanization
in agriculture. had a positive impact on land conversion to agriculture as it supported
less-labor intensive farming amicable for rich farmers seeking in­
Land conversion Reference Agricultural Reference
drivers intensification
vestments in the farming sector. Private sector investments and foreign
drivers direct investments in agriculture are emerging as new kinds of drivers
sustaining demand for agricultural land in the past decade (Ravanera
Population growth Azadi et al. • Economic Alauddin and
(2011), development Quiggin and Gorra, 2011). Food trade opportunities due to the regional eco­
Hosonuma et al. • Commercial (2008), Hao nomic integration in the ASEAN region also has sustained demand for
(2012), FAO investments in et al. (2015) agricultural land.
(2016) farming
Drivers that took land away from agriculture include urbanization,
(commercial
farming) industrialization, and infrastructure development. High land prices for
• Economic growth Azadi et al. • Crop Gunasena housing in urban areas has led to the conversion of agricultural land to
• Economic (2011), Guo diversification (2001), Hao housing. The declining rural population in the developed Asian coun­
transition et al., 2014, • Improved et al. (2015) tries has subjected agricultural land to convert to non-agricultural pur­
• Rural private Vadrevu et al. varieties
poses. Declining farm profits, market imperfections, poor farm price
enterprise (2017) • Controlled
development environments policies, natural hazards, and growing education levels have driven
• Infrastructure • Type of crops people out of farming predisposing land to be converted away from
including rural grown agriculture. Land degradation has prone agricultural land to be con­
infrastructure and
verted into non-agricultural uses.
highways
• Agricultural Ravanera and • Irrigation Gunasena
The principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out to under­
development Gorra (2011), • Groundwater (2001), stand the drivers behind agricultural land transformations in Asia and
including Hosonuma et al. access Alauddin and results are presented in Table 3 and Fig. 3. The Bartlet’s test of sphericity
commercial (2012), FAO Quiggin for all country and trend groups yielded significant results (p < 0.001).
agriculture (2016) (2008)
All the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy values
• Private sector
investments in were more than 0.7 indicating that the PCA analysis is appropriate for
agriculture the included variables. The results also indicated that the top two
• Foreign direct principal components in each country groupings have explained more
investment in
than 94 % of the variance except in the case of least developed countries
agriculture
• Increase in
agricultural trade
Table 3
• Food security
Total variance explained by the top two principal components.
priorities
• Urbanisation Azadi et al. Fertilisers Gunasena Eigenvalues
• Urban population (2011), Guo (2001), Nani Principal
Component Total % of Cumulative
et al. (2014) et al. (2011)
Variance %
• Land productivity Azadi et al. • Proportion of non- Hao et al.
• Capital-labour (2011), farm income (2015) Land change trend grouping of countries
ratio Hosonuma et al. • Contribution of Increasing 1 5.170 86.167 86.167
• Land tenure (2012) family labour agriculture land 2 0.774 12.905 99.072
security No change in 1 5.579 92.982 92.982
• Governance of agriculture land 2 0.347 5.784 98.766
land-use change Decreasing 1 4.834 80.575 80.575
Climate change Oliver and • Farm Gunasena agriculture land 2 1.019 16.992 97.566
(especially water Morecraft mechanisation (2001), Nani Developmental grouping of countries
and temperature as (2014), Niles • Controlled et al. (2011) 1 4.674 77.900 77.900
Developed countries
limiting factors) et al., 2015, environments 2 0.986 16.441 94.341
FAO (2016) 1 4.674 77.900 77.900
Developing countries
Resource degradation Hamidov et al. 2 0.986 16.441 94.341
(2016) Least developed 1 5.811 96.853 96.853
countries 2 0.166 2.774 99.627
Source: Author, from references cited.

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S.V.R.K. Prabhakar Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238

Fig. 3. Relationship between two principal components determining the agricultural land conversion in Asia.
Source: Analysis by the Author, based on data from FAO (2018a,b).
Notes: TrGDP: GDP PPP (constant 2011); TrFP: fertilisers and pesticides; TrPIA: % of irrigated agricultural area; TrGPIN: Agricultural gross production index number
(2004− 2006 = 100); TrTP: Total population; and TrPRP: % of rural population. Here, Tr stands for log-transformed data.

Fig. 4. Multiple linear regression results between agricultural land and selected independent variables.

5
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar
where the first principal component itself explained more than 96 % of
the variance (Table 3). The Eigenvalues indicated that the first principal
component in all country groupings explained the variance more than
four measured variables included in the analysis whereas the second
principal component accounted for less than a single measured variable,
except in the case of decreasing agriculture land country group.
In Fig. 3, the upper row of the component plot is related to the three
trends of agricultural land change, i.e. increasing, no change and
decreasing from left to right, and the lower row is related to the three
developmental categories of countries i.e. developed countries, devel­
oping countries and least developed countries. When countries are
grouped according to their agricultural land change trends, both the
principal components are positively correlated, in general, for factors
such as percent of irrigated agriculture, chemical inputs, gross produc­
tion, GDP, and total population and both principal components had
negative correlation for percent of the rural population in countries
where the agriculture land was either increasing or didn’t change during
the assessed years.
The examination of these plots also indicates that the agricultural
land change in countries where agricultural land increased was posi­
tively correlated with the fertilizers and pesticides, total population,
GDP, and agricultural gross production while the percentage irrigated
agriculture and percentage of the rural population were negatively
correlated. Similarly, in the case of countries where the agricultural land
declined, only the GDP showed a positive correlation between both the
principal components.
In terms of the development grouping of countries, the analysis
indicated that GDP, percent of irrigated agriculture, and chemical inputs
such as fertilisers and pesticides maintained a positive relationship be­
tween the two principal components across the three developmental
categories of countries, indicating that irrespective of developmental
level, these factors have a positive influence on agricultural land. Total
population and gross production showed a negative correlation between
both the principal components across the three development categories.
Fig. 4 shows the multiple linear regression results between the
dependent variable agricultural land and independent variables GDP,
agricultural production, total population, rural population, the area
under irrigation, and chemical inputs. The resultant regression equa­
tions are presented along with the R squared values in Fig. 4. They
indicate that the included factors were able to explain the high pro­
portion of variance in agricultural land in all country groupings pre­
sented here except in countries where the agricultural land didn’t
change. In this case, only 53 % of the variance in agricultural land could
be explained by the model. For example, the relationship in agricultural
land in countries where it increased could be given as (F(6, 6) = 26.496,
p < 0.001) with an R2 of 0.964. In this case, the linear model for pre­
dicting agricultural land is 7.593 + 0.0382(GDP)+0.017(Chemical
inputs)+0.018(Total Population)-0.107(% of the irrigated area)-0.033
(Gross Agricultural Production)-0.135(% of rural population). It can
be deduced that the agricultural area in these countries increases in
direct proportion to the increase in GDP, chemical inputs, and total
population and decreases with investments in irrigated agriculture.
The above results can be observed in light of the previously reported
literature. Irrigation provision under water-scarce conditions, by giving
agriculture more preference than other economic sectors, could drive
more land towards agriculture. Using EKCs, clear linkages between the
per capita income of farmers and agricultural land use was demon­
strated (James, 1999). An inverted EKC indicated a clear breakeven
point beyond which the agricultural land is retired for other purposes. In
addition, crop yields are negatively correlated with agricultural land use
and population density and ownership security are positively correlate
with agricultural land use. Agricultural intensification has had a sig­
nificant impact on the livelihoods of farmers in Asia (Nani et al., 2011).
Xu et al. (2019) reported that the socioeconomic drivers are more
important than biophysical drivers for the conversion of forest to agri­
cultural land in South Asia and maritime Southeast Asia.
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Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238
Nearly 65 % of Asian countries have shown rapid urbanization
mainly in South and East Asian countries. Countries with the highest
urban population growth rates are Lao PDR followed by Thailand,
China, and Bhutan. Countries in West Asia are slowly deurbanizing as
reflected by the declining urban population in these countries. The
urban population in Lebanon declined by 12 % over the past 15 years. A
similar decline in the urban population was observed in Jordan,
Kazakhstan, and the Philippines. Countries with a negative correlation
between agricultural land and urban population have recorded a sig­
nificant decline in agricultural land, and countries with positive corre­
lation have shown a significant increase in agricultural land in Asia
(Fig. 5). Countries in red color in the top half and bottom half of the
figure showed significant positive and negative correlation respectively
between the urban population and land-use change. Green arrows
indicate the direction of agricultural land change.
Biofuels had a significant impact on land use in Asia (Elder and
Hayashi, 2018; Takeuchi et al., 2018). India had a major share of bio­
fuels in South Asia with biofuels constituting 3.01 % of the total trans­
portation fuels in 2007 (Elder et al., 2008). Biofuels were feared for their
role in the conversion of land into biofuel production in several coun­
tries of Asia (Elder and Hayashi, 2018). The demand for biofuels has
resulted in the allocation of agriculture land for biofuels in India
(Schaldach et al., 2011), China, Indonesia, and Malaysia (Valin et al.,
2015). There are strong projections for the growth of biofuels in the near
future as the energy demand in Asia is projected to continue to grow
where sustainable biofuels can still play a role (Hughes and Jones, 2020;
Elder and Hayashi, 2018).
Rapid economic development, increasing middle-class society,
changing lifestyles, and increasing trade are also affecting land use in
Asia. A traditional grower of cereals in 1970, Asia produced more fruits
and vegetables than cereals, and livestock products have nearly doubled
in 2010 (ADB, 2013). Livestock production and feed are competing for
agricultural land and water with land and water pollution implications
(Ahuja, 2012).
3.3.2. Drivers of agricultural intensification
In this section, trends in agricultural intensification are presented for
three categories of countries a) countries that gained agricultural land,
b) countries that lost agricultural land, and c) countries with stable
agricultural land. Here, agricultural intensification was expressed as a
function of combined market inputs of water, fertilizers, and pesticides
used in agricultural production. These parameters were compared be­
tween 2002 and 2015 and expressed as % change from 2002 values
(Fig. 6).
The increase in the use of pesticides and fertilizers played a major
role in agricultural intensification in countries where agricultural land
expanded. However, countries have not differed much in terms of other
characteristics such as irrigated area and agricultural productivity.
Countries, where agricultural land declined, had marginally higher
productivity gains over the countries where agricultural land expanded.
Similarly, the area under irrigation was marginally higher in these
countries compared to the countries where agricultural land remained
stable. These observations indicate that marginal gains in irrigated area
and agricultural productivity may have contributed to the decline in
agricultural land in some countries while countries that gained agri­
cultural land were also using more pesticides and fertilizers.
The food-fuel-water nexus deserves attention due to its impact on
agriculture. The nexus refers to the interdependency between energy,
water, and food. The nexus indicates food production can create sig­
nificant demand for energy and water, especially in intensive farming
systems. Due to the strong nexus between food, water, and energy and
the absence of efforts to decouple these linkages, uncoordinated efforts
to meet food, water, and energy needs in the region are leading to
disproportionate impacts on individual components of this ‘triad’.
Minimum support prices and subsidies on agricultural inputs are
important for most developing countries in Asia while developed
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar
Fig. 5. Relationship between urbanization and loss of agricultural land (Countries in red color show significant positive and negative correlation at a probability
level of 0.05) (Source: Author, based on data from FAOSTAT). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web
version of this article).
countries are slowly moving away from input subsidies to direct cash
payments (Hudson et al., 2011). These policies are justified as necessary
to support economic and agricultural growth, poverty reduction, and
farm profitability, and for meeting food security goals (Lopez et al.,
2017). These policies are helping the retention of farmers in farming,
helping in the expansion of certain agricultural crops, and helping
farmers to sustain the rate of agricultural input use that may not be
possible in the absence of subsidies.
Agricultural exports are another significant driver of intensification
in Asia. Agricultural exports constituted 3.2 %, 13.2 %, 17 %, 15.2 %,
26.5 % of GDP of China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and
Malaysia respectively in 2016 (World Trade Organization, 2016).
Developed countries and economies in transition such as Japan (1.6 % of
GDP), South Korea (2.1 %), and Malaysia (12.2 %) too benefit from
agricultural exports but at a lower level. Agricultural export policies
have contributed to agricultural intensification in a rush for premium
prices in international markets, growing demand for agricultural im­
ports from developed countries, greater expansion of agribusiness,
finance, and technologies for commercial crops (ADB, 2013).
3.4. Socio-economic and environmental trade-offs
Agricultural land transformations could have socio-economic and
environmental trade-offs. In terms of trade-offs, it is often expected that
countries that expand agricultural land will have lower import de­
pendency on cereals. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that some of
the countries where agricultural area increased continued to increase
their food import dependency higher than countries with declined or
stable agricultural land (Fig. 7). An increase in per capita consumption
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Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238
of rice at a rate higher than the increase in agricultural production has
especially contributed to the food imports in Indonesia despite the
expansion of agricultural land (Indonesia Investments, 2017).
Negative externalities of agricultural intensification are abundant in
Asian countries. There has been a steady rise in agriculture areas with
declining total factor productivity in the Gangetic Basin (Prabhakar and
Elder, 2009). Food subsidies such as providing minimum support price
to food crops have led to a disproportionate expansion of crops which in
turn has led to increased water and chemical consumption (Sharma,
2015). The intensive use of chemicals has led to pollution of sub-surface
and surface water sources, increased runoff, and silting of freshwater
bodies resulting in eutrophication affecting the freshwater (Wasantha
et al., 2015). The negative impact of land-use changes on soil and water
on ecosystems has also been reported (Vlek et al., 2017).
Intensive farming practices have put pressure on ecosystems leading
to land degradation, soil erosion and loss of soil fertility. Erosion is
prevalent in some parts of India and regions to the north of China (FAO,
2014). Deforestation, overgrazing, and conversion of rangelands and
forests have resulted in a great decline in the physical, chemical, and
biological quality of soil resources in the Asia and Pacific. Several in­
vestigations have addressed the effects of land-use changes and land
management on soil properties. Loss of soil properties and soil degra­
dation occur due to deforestation and subsequent intensive cultivation
in different time spans (UNEP, 2016).
Unsustainable agricultural practices are associated with widespread
land degradation in Asia and this results in serious social trade-offs
(environmental aspects of land degradation are discussed in the next
section). About 21 % of the total land area in Asia is estimated to have
been affected by the water erosion, 9% by wind erosion, 11 % by
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238

Fig. 6. % change in drivers of agricultural intensification a) countries grouped as per the land use change categories, b) countries grouped based on economic
development (Source: Author, based on data from FAOSTAT).

Fig. 7. Food import dependency in three categories of countries (Source: Author, based on data from FAOSTAT).

chemical deterioration, and 4% by physical deterioration (Yagi et al.,
2015). The number of people living on degraded agricultural lands has
increased in the past two decades with consequent implications for their
wellbeing (Barber and Hochard, 2016).The land degradation is esti­
mated to have significant social and environmental costs. For example,
in the Central Asia alone, the land degradation was estimated to have a
developmental cost of 6 billion USD per annum during 2001–2009
(Mirzabaev et al., 2016). For South Asia, the estimated cost of land
degradation was reported to be 84 billion USD (UNCCD, 2018). The cost
of land degradation was estimated to be 5.87 and 1.82 billion USD for
East Asia and Southeast Asia respectively in 2007 (Nkonya et al., 2016).
People who are living on increasingly degraded lands may no longer be
able to sustain themselves through gainful crop production. In some
cases they have been forced into the distress sale of their lands to the
wealthy, who have converted them to other more profitable uses such as
commercial aquaculture, which contaminates waters and degrades the
land even further (Scott, 2008). Once the land that poor farmers depend
upon is degraded it is unlikely to recover. Local agricultural extension
systems and other government departments engaged in rural develop­
ment often lack knowledge and the resources to assist poor farming
households recover their land fertility.
Biofuel production consumes a significant amount of water

8
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar
depending on the type of feedstock and processing methods (e.g. soy
feedstock can require 47–215 liters of water per MJ energy produced
(Oconnor, 2012)). Expansion of biofuels resulted in net positive green­
house gas emissions since the land was converted from forests, grass­
lands, and peatlands in Indonesia and Malaysia (Fulton et al., 2017).
Agriculture consumes a significant proportion of electricity in India
(Government of India, 2016). Evidence indicates the impact of subsi­
dized rural electrification programs on the overuse of groundwater in
some parts of India (Sharma, 2015). Power subsidies are prevalent in
other Asian countries with the lowest tariff rates for the agriculture
sector (Jamil, 2014). Studies also have shown that the growing energy
needs in the future could further exacerbate the water deficit and in­
crease water demand for energy production by five times by 2050 in
Asia (Mitra and Bhattacharya, 2012).
Groundwater use has contributed to agricultural intensification in
South Asia and is making the agriculture environmentally-intensive
(Acharya, 2014). This entails significant damage to the physical envi­
ronment and threat to agricultural production in the long run. The
increasing use of groundwater has a greater environmental cost and it
has been argued that the price paid for groundwater use has often been
lower than the social opportunity cost it has and hence it has been used
more intensively in regions such as southern Asia (Alauddin and Quig­
gin, 2008).
Agricultural intensification has also contributed to climate change
through the promotion of fertilizer use that originates from fossil fuels,
farm mechanization that drove on-farm energy use and burning of crop
residues in parts of Asia that otherwise would have been left to be
decomposed in an extensive farming system (Nani et al., 2011).
Expansion of agriculture in tropics has been reported to have a warming
effect on the atmosphere due to surface brightening and consequent
reduction of net radiation not balancing the increase in temperature
associated with reduced transpiration (Duveiller et al., 2017).
3.5. Measures for easing the pressure on land
Recommendations for addressing agricultural land transformations
would have to consider the food security and developmental needs of
Asia. In this section, some recommendations are discussed to a) reduce
the demand for agricultural land, and b) to address the perils of inten­
sification. Some solutions discussed in this section have already been
implemented to a limited extent in the region and have not reached the
scale commensurate to the need and the potential to address pressures
on land.
3.5.1. Improving agricultural productivity
Improving agricultural productivity is a low-hanging fruit that can
reduce the demand for new agricultural land (Prabhakar, 2012). The
total factor productivity (TFP) has been either stagnating or on the
decline and gains in agricultural production without harming the envi­
ronment are important for Asia (Prabhakar and Elder, 2009). An
important opportunity for the region is to focus on productivity gains in
rainfed agriculture. Agricultural productivity gains in rainfed areas
remained sub-par and efforts to improve rainfed agriculture have largely
been unsuccessful. There is a need for renewed investments in rainfed
farming with more private sector engagement which has largely been
confined to the fertile and irrigated areas.
3.5.2. Sustainable agriculture
Organic agriculture occupies a significant share of sustainable agri­
culture in Asia and there is a great potential for its further expansion
(Sano and Prabhakar, 2009). Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can bring
climate change mitigation benefits while reducing the impact of climate
change on agriculture (Lipper et al., 2018). The smartness in CSA is the
ability to use opportunities provided by climate change while tackling
the challenges associated with it. CSA can reduce the demand for
off-farm inputs, energy, and water and enhance production and
9
Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238
productivity within the sustainability boundaries while protecting food
production and rural livelihoods from climatic vagaries.
Food labeling can mitigate the negative impacts of agricultural
intensification. Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea have
made great inroads into food labeling. However, current conventional
food labeling is restricted to providing food composition, nutritional
information, and the geographical source of the food. Food labels need
to inform consumers on the environmental burden of the food such as
water, chemical and pesticide load, and carbon emissions so that con­
sumers can make educated choices.
3.5.3. Smart subsidies
Calls have been made to introduce smart subsidies (Dorward, 2009),
i.e. better targeting of poor farmers and those who need them than the
prevalent blanket subsidies. A related aspect is the agricultural price
support by governments. Though on the decline with governments
resorting to direct cash transfers, agricultural price support is still
prevalent in countries such as India and China. Commodity price sup­
port has a distorting effect on markets, enable farmers to continue to use
off-farm inputs that otherwise they can’t afford, and can contribute to
agricultural intensification, and land degradation. Commodity price
support is blanket policies where all producers irrespective of their
economic status are equally benefited. However, when such commodity
price supports are offered to sustainably produced food, the same policy
can contribute to sustainable food production and the wellbeing of food
producers and consumers.
3.5.4. Easing food-fuel conflicts
The National Biofuel Policy by the Government of India introduced
in 2009 has limited biofuel production to non-food feedstock on
degraded lands avoiding food-fuel conflicts (Prabhakar and Elder,
2010). While such policies may have restricted the biofuel focus to
non-food feedstock, it is difficult to limit these crops to marginal and
degraded lands only. Though evidence is hard to come by, farmers are
not restricted to grow jatropha, a biodiesel feedstock, or any other
biofuel crops only on degraded lands as perceived profits could lure
farmers to cultivate on fertile lands for high yields and monitory returns
(The Guardian, 2009). This indicates the limitation of policies in having
a precise impact on the ground even though they are well-intentioned.
Hence, it is essential to combine such policies with support from
farmer groups such as cooperatives as pressure groups that discourage
farmers from growing biofuel crops on fertile lands.
3.5.5. Renewable energy in agriculture
Agriculture largely employs carbon-intensive energy derived from
fossil fuels in Asia. Promoting renewable energy in agriculture in India
and East Asian countries has a beneficial impact in reducing the demand
on the grid-electricity, reducing the demand for coal, reducing the water
for thermal power production, and contribute to GHG emission reduc­
tion. Biogas promotion has been an important rural energy program in
South Asia with significant rural development, food, and energy nexus
benefits (Ministry of Finance, 2011; MNRE, 2014). Biogas plants can
reduce the demand for fossil fuels, can motivate farmers to keep cattle,
generates manure for crops, and help improve agricultural yields and
soil health while increasing the energy security of rural households.
3.5.6. Reducing the water use
Water-efficient technologies reduce pumping needs and make water
available for other priority sectors. Countries have been promoting high
water use efficiency practices in agriculture but scaling up of these
technologies has been limited due to lack of capacity among farmers,
lack of positive incentives, presence of electricity subsidies (perverse
subsidies), and lack control on water management infrastructure
(Hasanain et al., 2012). Water pricing can be applied to both the surface
and subsurface water and has the potential to address the excess irri­
gation. When combined with irrigation rationing, the impact on water
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar
resource utilization could be substantial. Agricultural water pricing has
not received support from policymakers which is a major factor for the
unsustainable exploitation of water resources in Asia. Engaging local
water user associations can help dissuade members from the overuse of
irrigation water.
3.5.7. Reducing the food waste
Food waste is an issue for both developed and developing countries
(Parfitt et al., 2010). An estimated 12 billion USD worth of food is being
lost in India every year (Rabo India Finance, 2007). Food wastage
happens due to lack of storage and transportation facilities, absence or
poor enforcement of food handling standards, changing food con­
sumption patterns, insufficient development of the food processing in­
dustry, food pricing, and seasonal agricultural glut (World Food
Program, 2009).
Addressing food waste has to cover the entire lifecycle of the food
and be a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder collaboration. At the
consumers’ end, the introduction of food waste reduction campaigns, as
in the case of the National Food Waste Reduction Plan (1996) of the
Republic of Korea, could be effective (Lee, 2006). At the producers’ end,
the provision of seasonal price forecasts to farmers, introduction of fu­
tures contracts, promoting accessible cold storage facilities through
public-private partnerships and cooperatives, and promoting small scale
on-farm food processing could reduce the food wastage. At the supply
chain end, the introduction of food labeling with appropriate expiry
dates, and making available food in optimally sized packs could help
consumers in making proper purchase choices. Distributing the unspent
food from restaurants and households to the needy will help in
addressing hunger and food waste. Increasing the resilience of agricul­
ture to natural hazards through improved seasonal forecasts, and
improved seasonal calendars can help farmers adapt to changing
weather and climate and reduce crop loss. Our ability to forecast and
communicate extreme weather events that cause significant crop losses
also needs to be improved.
3.5.8. Urban farming
Urban farming is gaining attention in Asia (FAO, 2018a,b). Urban
farming can minimize carbon emissions from food transport, water
miles, and the ecological footprint of cities. There are no macro-level
comprehensive assessments on the food production potential of urban
areas and the associated environmental costs and benefits in Asia. Since
Asian cities are facing electricity and water shortages, the promotion of
urban farming could further increase demand for water and electricity.
Hence, urban farming needs to be coupled with renewable energy, water
harvesting, organic inputs, and waste reduction, and recycling ap­
proaches. There is a need to standardize agricultural practices for urban
microclimates and build capacities of city governments to advise,
monitor, and regulate urban agriculture.
3.5.9. Integrated land governance
Satoyama highlights interlinkages between forests and agriculture
and stresses the need to manage ecosystems as integrated units. Land
must be governed in an integrated manner to avoid environmental
harm, social conflict, and suboptimal outcomes of land use. Integrated
land governance consists of structures and processes that bring different
stakeholders from different sectors together to agree on how land should
be used and managed sustainably. Currently, land governance is highly
fragmented ignoring interlinkages between various forms of land and
their impacts on the overall wellbeing of the dependant populations.
Integrated land governance can help the agency (e.g. the Ministry of
Housing) to understand the impacts of its decision on the land under the
purview of another agency (e.g. the Ministry of Agriculture). Integrated
land governance means associating environmental and socio-economic
impact assessments with the land use plans so that the decision-
makers are certain about the consequences of allocating land to
certain use categories or when an investment decision is made that
10
Land Use Policy 102 (2021) 105238
impacts the land. Integrated land governance also means bringing in the
perspective of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into
the land use decision making for the future.
3.5.10. Land degradation neutrality
The Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) is defined as “A state
whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support
ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains
stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales and
ecosystems (UNCCD, 2015).” The LDN aims to stabilize or increase the
amount and quality of land that is necessary to support ecosystem ser­
vices and functions, and food security within specified temporal and
spatial scales. It enables countries to counterbalance the loss of pro­
ductive land with the recovery of degraded lands. LDN is an overarching
policy and can be applied to a variety of land use classes, agricultural
lands, in particular, can benefit from it as more agricultural land is
degraded. LDN for agriculture means putting long-term interests ahead
of short-term interests and prioritizing efficiency over-optimization
leading to resilient ecosystems and societies.
4. Conclusions
This paper identified trends in agricultural land-use changes and
provided an understanding of various drivers behind these changes. In
general, achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while safe­
guarding the health of agricultural land, in particular, presents a para­
doxical problem for Asia. The food production and productivity
improvements in the region so far have come from significant intensi­
fication with associated damage to the agricultural ecosystems even
though these production gains have lifted millions of people out of
poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. In the shorter term, the strategy to
achieve SDGs such as zero hunger could be achieved by sustaining the
current food production levels while addressing distributional issues
without further stressing the agricultural systems.
Our ability to address issues such as unhealthy consumption pat­
terns, food losses, inefficient food production practices provide us
needed leverage to give ecosystems time to recover and rejuvenate. In
the longer term, it would require new and innovative means of achieving
food security without harming the environment. This could include a
change of food habits towards healthy choices and the introduction of
new sources of food that may demand significant cultural adjustments
but do not burden the environment.
It is evident that the impacts of agricultural land-use decisions do not
remain in the agriculture sector alone but affect several other sectors.
The fact that the land is still governed in a fragmented manner by
various ministries responsible for different economic sectors indicates
the need for a paradigm change in the way the land is governed. Such a
change could include greater policy coordination between ministries
that govern land so that decisions made in one ministry or sector do not
have negative consequences on other ministries. Hence, there is a need
for a system that visualizes the impacts of land-use decisions in an in­
tegrated fashion. This calls for developing integrated land-use decision
support systems that are currently not well researched and developed for
policy decisions.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal
analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualiza­
tion, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the
online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.10
5238.
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