Climate change to pit timber production against agriculture: Study

Melting permafrost will lead to agricultural production shifting northwards, which will eat away at existing timber forests, leading to  potential conflict, the study found

World population is growing at a rapid pace, adding about 83 million people every year. Currently, we are at 8.2 billion, expected to become 9.7 billion by 2050. Naturally, this means there will be an added increase in demand for resources like food, water, and more importantly, land. Not just to live on, but to grow more food and produce more timber.

But these two resources will be at loggerheads, competing for the scarce commodity of land, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change.

The main premise of the possible conflict is priority: what’s more important – food or timber? While food is needed for sustenance, timber is used mainly for construction from houses to transport, and as a raw material in multiple critical industries. 

While timber adds more than US$1.5  trillion annually to the global economy, or about 2% of the world’s GDP, agriculture’s share is double at 4%. 

Naturally, the competition is stiff. But with global warming melting permafrost in the temperate regions of the Global North like Russia and Canada, which are the largest timber producers, new forest land will become fit for agriculture. And the potential for conflict will also increase.

To avoid this and minimise crop expansion into forestry land, as well as prevent timber harvesting in ancient tropical and boreal forests to meet increased timber demand, the study found that emissions must be reduced, agricultural efficiency improved and sustainable intensification invested in.

A tough choice

Timber production, carried out in a third of the world’s forests, is expected to grow between 54-200% by 2050, primarily driven by rapid urbanisation, according to the study. With the growing need of green architecture for the net zero transition, there will be an even increased demand for timber to substitute concrete and steel in construction.

Parallely, agricultural production needs are expected to double by 2050, as compared to 2005 levels, the study found. In the next six decades, 1.5  billion  hectares of previously non-arable land will become conducive for agricultural production. Out of that, roughly 0.24-0.32 billion hectares of current forest covered land will become suitable for agriculture – roughly 20–26% of current global forestry land—an area spanning India. Most of it is primarily in western Canada, Siberia in Russia, the USA and China – the world’s top four timber producers.

According to the study, 2.2  billion  hectares of currently arable land will become less suitable. In balance, the land available for agricultural production is set to decrease with increased effects of a warming planet, which might lead to agriculture claiming timberland in the future.

Not that timber forests are leading a rosy life. Increased wildfires, which have wiped out timber producing regions the size of Great Britain in the past two decades, compounded with threats from heat-induced pest outbreaks are affecting timber production greatly. The study stated that the rate of loss of timber today is 2x-4x of 2016 levels.

However, the study pointed out that both the increased land for agriculture and timber production face a major problem — wildfires. With temperate climes warming disproportionately faster than elsewhere, there’s higher incidences of dry conditions, and even drought, increasing the chances of wildfires, which will affect timber producing forests, and future arable land.

Need for sustainable agriculture

So, as the planet warms up, agriculture production will travel northward, shifting current timber production even more northwards, encroaching upon pristine boreal forests, which store tremendous amounts of carbon. Parallely, it could also lead to vast deforestation in tropical forests like the Amazon and the Congo, which would have devastating consequences for millions of species of flora and fauna, and 1.6 billion people.

The study points out that as agriculture production ramps up to feed a growing population, it will expand into existing timber land, risking knock-on effects for timber production, and other forest ecosystems. 

Minimising this potential conflict is crucial. What’s the solution?

Making agriculture sustainable and efficient, according to the study. This includes reducing yield gaps, using multiple cropping techniques, and economically efficient land usage. This could potentially shoot up agricultural output by 79–148%. 

Reducing food wastage, which is about a third of total food production, is another way to go. More importantly, the study suggests shifting away from producing ruminant meat from cattle, sheep and goats, would reduce land requirements for food production by nearly 70%. This would leave around a billion hectares of land free for timber production.

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