Land-use change and the resilience of food production systems (LucFRes)

Securing food production remains a critical challenge in many world regions. Environmental change, in particular land-use change, constrains food production especially in contexts characterised by competing land demands, high population pressure and food insecurity that got compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Land-use change has long-term impacts through land degradation which affects food production systems (FPSs). Hence, an understanding of how changing land-uses shape the resilience of FPSs is therefore urgently needed to enhance agriculture’s adaptation. LucFRes aims to examine the processes operating at the interface of agricultural land-use and food production. Agricultural land-use change will be characterised in terms of the change intensities and the driving factors using Intensity Analysis, a spatially explicit, land change accounting framework. Relevant land-based resilience indicators for FPSs will be identified and validated with stakeholders for Southwest Nigeria. The combination of the satellite remote sensing-based land-use change intensities with stakeholders’ perspectives of likely land-use changes will provide the empirical-basis for modelling FPSs behaviour under changing policy and land management scenarios. To better optimise agricultural land-use change, the modelling will account for trade-offs and options for enhancing synergies between food production and other land uses. Thematically, LucFRes goes beyond the impacts of land-use on agricultural productivity by examining how changes in agricultural land-use build or undermine the resilience of food production systems in Southwest Nigeria, an area that have received little research attention. LucFRes’ integrative and policy-oriented approach will develop trajectories for enhancing the resilience of food production systems in Southwest Nigeria. Conceptually, it will provide a methodology for assessing the resilience of food production systems that is applicable to similar world regions.