LAFO

Building on EU land use statistics and bilateral trade statistics related to more than 500 commodities, the Land Footprint model performs yearly estimations of cropland, grassland, and forest land used to produce bio-based products consumed in the EU, by country of origin (De Laurentiis et al., 2024).

The land footprint of EU consumption is calculated by adding together the domestic land footprint (land use taking place within EU borders) and the land footprint of net trade (land footprint of imports minus land footprint of exports). When calculating the land footprint embodied in imports, only commodities imported to be consumed in the EU are considered, thus excluding the land embodied in commodities imported to be exported (either as such or after transformation). Similarly, the land footprint embodied in EU exports is calculated considering only the exported commodities that originated from EU production, and not from imports. In this way, the land embodied in imports corresponds to a use of land taking place outside EU borders driven by EU consumption, and the land embodied in exports corresponds to a use of land taking place within EU borders.

Three different land uses are considered:

• Cropland use: harvested area necessary to grow annual and permanent crops (fallow land is excluded from this definition).
• Grassland use: the hypothetical area needed for grazing if a country's grazing land were used at maximum intensity, based on the current productivity of natural grazing lands and assuming a maximum threshold for sustainable use of grazed biomass.
• Forest land use: hypothetical area needed for timber production under the assumption of non-depleting stocks.

The commodities modelled belong to 5 groups: primary crops, plant-based products (deriving from primary crops after transformation), livestock products, fish products, timber-based products. For all groups, the first step involves re-allocating imported and exported commodities to the country where land was used to produce them. Then each commodity is converted into their embodied cropland, grassland, or forestland (or a combination of the first two), following a calculation approach tailored to the commodity group. This involves the use of yield data (in the case of primary crops), of a combination of technical coefficients (e.g. expressing production efficiencies) allowing to convert processed commodities in their primary commodity equivalent, and yield data (for plant-based products, fish products, and livestock products), or a combination of technical coefficients and forests net annual increment values, in the case of timber-based products. To account for co-production in both plant-based and livestock products (e.g. the production of soy-oil and soy-cake from the same crop), economic allocation is performed, entailing that the input primary commodity equivalent is partitioned between two or more output co-products in proportion to their economic value.

Domestic grassland and forest land are modelled in a similar way, using as a starting point statistics on production of livestock products and roundwood removals. Instead domestic cropland use is taken directly from harvested area reported for primary crops in EU land use statistics.

The Land Footprint model in based on the combination of:

• Bilateral trade data between the EU and non-EU countries
• Bilateral trade data between non-EU countries
• Production data of crops and livestock products
• Roundwood removals
• Yield data by crop and country of origin
• Net primary productivity of grassland by country of origin
• EU harvested areas for primary crops
• Net annual increment of wood in EU and non-EU countries
• Technical coefficients (e.g. production efficiencies, livestock diet composition, feed conversion ratios) taken from the scientific and technical literature.

The Land Footprint model provides yearly estimates of cropland, grassland, and forest land for each considered product code at different scales.

For domestic production:

• At EU level
• At Member States level

For imports:

• Disaggregated by country of origin (e.g. reporter EU27, partner Brazil)
• Aggregated across countries of origin (i.e. reporter EU27, partner extra-EU27)

For exports:

• Aggregated across receiving countries (i.e. reporter EU27, partner extra-EU27)

The Land Footprint model contributes to a better understanding of the link between production and consumption systems and can support policy making in a number of ways.

• Identifying hotspots, in terms of products responsible for a large share of the EU land footprint or countries from which the EU is virtually importing more land.
• Monitoring: yearly updates of the estimates can allow tracking the evolution of the pressure the EU is exerting on third countries, and the pressure posed by domestic production and exports of biobased products on the domestic use of land
• Setting a baseline against which policy options and green transitions scenarios can be tested, such as increased circularity and efficiency of supply chains, reduced food waste, and dietary shifts.
• Identifying transboundary and spillovers effects, providing detailed insights on the virtual land embodied in imported goods.

Therefore, the Land Footprint model can support both monitoring and ex-post evaluation of existing policies, as well as performing scenario analysis that could be used in ex-ante impact assessment of policies.

The land footprint estimates are currently being used by Eurostat to fulfill their mandate, e.g. Regulation (EC) 223/2009 on European statistics. Eurostat uses the land footprint estimates to enrich its portfolio of statistics and accounts about the environment and the drivers, pressures, and impacts of our societies on it. In particular, Eurostat uses the land footprint estimates for its regular monitoring of EU's progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (European Commission: Eurostat, Sustainable development in the European Union – Monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context – 2023 edition).