The research found that two-thirds of the world’s carbon loss from agriculture and two-thirds of its biodiversity loss occurs on just one-third of global farmland.
Researchers stated that agriculture has already caused the loss of an estimated 300 billion tonnes of stored carbon and put around 14% of species at risk of extinction through land conversion.
Much of this damage is concentrated across parts of South America, sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, the study found.
Animal-sourced foods account for most of agriculture’s environmental damage with beef and dairy having the greatest impact, contributing 29% of total carbon loss and 41% of biodiversity loss because producing them requires so much land.
On average, animal-sourced foods were associated with eight times more carbon loss and 14 times more biodiversity loss per calorie than plant-sourced foods.
The researchers examined the potential benefits of restoring the most heavily affected land. It said that by returning the 30% of farmland with the highest combined carbon and biodiversity losses to natural habitat it would save around 170 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to roughly 15 years of global fossil fuel emissions, while preventing around 60% of the extinction risk currently associated with agricultural land.
Professor Paul Behrens, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, said that climate and nature have been treated as separate problems for too long.
“Our findings show they’re often the same problem on the same piece of land, with two-thirds of the carbon damage and two-thirds of the biodiversity damage from farming happening on just a third of agricultural land,” he said.
“There is a huge opportunity to target the specific places and foods. The same actions can deliver for the climate and for nature at once.”
Researcher Baoxiao Liu, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University, said that the ongoing environmental costs with food production on farmland are often overlooked.
“We link long-term damage to both climate (carbon loss) and nature (biodiversity loss) to foods we currently consume. If farmland were no longer used for food, it could potentially be used for nature, helping to restore carbon stocks and provide habitat for more species. Our daily eating choices therefore have a real impact,” he said.