GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY

The goal of this Chapter is to study the complex interaction between agriculture, economic growth and the environment, given future uncertainties. We combine economic concepts and biophysical constraints in one consistent modeling framework to be able to quantify and analyze the long-term socio-economic and environmental consequences of different scenarios. Here, we present the innovative methodology of coupling an economic and a biophysical model to combine state of the art knowledge from economic and biophysical sources. First, a comprehensive representation of the agricultural and land markets is required in the economic model. Therefore we included a land demand structure to reflect the degree of substitutability of types of land-use types and we included a land supply curve to include the process of land conversion and land abandonment. Secondly, the adapted economic model (LEITAP) is linked to the biophysical-based integrated assessment model IMAGE allowing to feed back spatially and temporarily varying land productivity to the economic framework. Thirdly, the land supply curves in the economic model are parameterized by using the heterogeneou