Growing competition for land, water and energy call for global strategies ensuring affordable food production at minimum environmental impacts. Economic modelling studies suggest trade-off relationships between environmental sustainability and food prices. However, evidence based on empirical cost-functions supporting such trade-offs remains scarce at the global level. Here, based on cost engineering modelling, we show that optimised spatial allocation of 10 major crops, would reduce current costs of agricultural production by approximately 40% while improving environmental performance. Although production inputs per unit of output increase at local scales, a reduction of cultivated land of 50% overcompensates the slightly higher field-scale costs enabling improved overall cost-effectiveness. Our results suggest that long-run food prices are bound to continue to decrease under strong environmental policies. Policies supporting sustainability transitions in the land sector should focus on managing local barriers to the implementation of high-yield regenerative agricultural practices delivering multiple regional and global public goods.

中文翻译：

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以较低的食品生产成本恢复自然

对土地，水和能源的日益激烈的竞争要求制定全球战略，以确保在最小的环境影响下负担得起的粮食生产。经济模型研究表明，环境可持续性与食品价格之间存在权衡关系。但是，在全球范围内，基于经验成本函数支持此类折衷的证据仍然很少。在这里，基于成本工程模型，我们表明优化的10种主要农作物的空间分配将在提高环境绩效的同时将当前的农业生产成本降低约40％。尽管每单位产出的生产投入在地方规模上有所增加，但减少的耕地50％弥补了稍高的田间规模成本，从而提高了总体成本效益。我们的结果表明，在强有力的环境政策下，长期食品价格必将继续下降。支持土地部门可持续性转型的政策应着重于管理当地障碍，以实施提供多种区域和全球公共物品的高产可再生农业做法。