research highlights LAND-USE CHANGE Land and food security Land Use Pol. 76, 442–454 (2018) Credit: Chico Sanchez/Alamy Stock Photo More agricultural land increases food production, often at the expense of damaging habitats of high biodiversity. This trade-off is the basis of a major current academic debate, which discusses the potential of agricultural intensification to reduce the detrimental impact of food production on biodiversity. Fundamentally, though, it is unclear whether converting more land to produce food contributes to food security in the first place. Mauricio Galeana-Pizaña, from the Centro de Investigación en Ciencias de Información Geoespacial, Mexico, and colleagues show that increases in agricultural land cover have not led to improvements in food security in Mexico between 1976 and 2011, except for the case of maize self-sufficiency. Using geospatial analysis, they apply a ‘food environmental efficiency’ index to seven major ecoregions in the country. This quantitative indicator is higher where environmental conservation and food security are simultaneously high. The indicator integrates measures of food access, food self-sufficiency and land-use cover changes. The trends found differ by ecoregion and farming activity. Agricultural expansion in three ecoregions was related to increases in food production. However, livestock expansion, a land-use change also common in other regions in Latin America, was associated with diminishing food security in most ecoregions. Aiora Zabala Published online: 16 July 2018 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0112-2 Nature Sustainability | VOL 1 | JULY 2018 | 335 | www.nature.com/natsustain 335
