A spatial bio-economic modelling approach on the trade-offs between global bioenergy demand, agricultural intensification, expansion, and trade

Increased future demands for food, fibre and fuels from biomass can only be met if the available land and water resources on a global scale are used and managed as efficiently as possible. The main routes for making the global agricultural system more productive are through intensification and technological change on currently used agricultural land, land expansion into currently non-agricultural areas, and international trade in agricultural commodities and processed goods. In order to analyse the trade-offs and synergies between these options, we present a global bio-economic modelling approach with a special focus on spatially explicit land and water constraints as well as technological change in agricultural production. For a given bioenergy demand scenario until the middle of the 21st century and different land allocation options, we analyse the required rate of productivity increase on agricultural land as well as the implicit values (shadow prices) of limited land and water resources. The shadow prices for bioenergy are provided as a metric for assessing the trade-offs between different land allocation options