Balancing Future Cropland Demand with Climate-Constrained Land Availability

Ensuring global food security increasingly depends on how the agricultural sector adapts to social and environmental transformations. Historically, rising food demand has been met through technological improvements and expansion of cropland, but climate change is redefining where crops can thrive. Global food production depends on both the amount of land harvested and its productivity. Although climate change has already influenced crop yields, many future projections overlook whether land will remain suitable for cultivation, which risks overestimating available cropland. Our analysis shows that incorporating climate constraints significantly reduces the area of land suitable for cropping. While some high-latitude regions may appear to gain suitability, these benefits largely vanish when soil and terrain limitations are considered, resulting in no net global increase in cultivable land. The reduction in suitable cropland is driven mainly by losses in tropical and subtropical regions, which face growing land scarcity even under sustainable scenarios, and even more so under high-emission pathways. South and Southeast Asia are projected to experience widespread land shortages, while parts of Africa and South America encounter deficits under high-emission pathways, limiting their capacity to meet local food demand. In these areas, yield improvements cannot fully compensate for land shortages, as the required increases exceed biophysical limits. Accounting for these constraints is critical to ensure that future cropland projections remain realistic, as they form the basis for food security planning and Earth system modeling.