How to make land use policy decisions: Integrating science and economics to deliver connected climate, biodiversity, and food objectives.

Land use change is crucial to addressing the existential threats of climate change and biodiversity loss while enhancing food security [M. Zurek , , 1416-1421 (2022)]. The interconnected and spatially varying nature of the impacts of land use change means that these challenges must be addressed simultaneously [H.

Natural capital approaches for the optimal design of policies for nature recovery.

By embedding a spatially explicit ecosystem services modelling tool within a policy simulator we examine the insights that natural capital analysis can bring to the design of policies for nature recovery. Our study is illustrated through a case example of policies incentivising the establishment of new natural habitat in England. We find that a policy mirroring the current practice of offering payments per hectare of habitat creation fails to break even, delivering less value in improved flows of ecosystem services than public money spent and only 26% of that which is theoretically achievable.

Landscape irrigation management for maintaining an aquifer and economic returns.

Expanding irrigated agriculture and dryer climatic conditions has led to large-scale withdrawals of groundwater and the decline in shallow aquifers. Policy makers must wrestle with the challenge of maintaining economic growth while conserving the groundwater resource. A spatially explicit landscape level model analyzes consequences of optimally chosen crop mix patterns on an aquifer and economic returns.

Determination of maize kernel hardness: comparison of different laboratory tests to predict dry-milling performance.

Background: Numerous foods are produced from maize, and grain hardness has been described to have an impact on grain end-use value, and in particular for dry-milling performance.

Results: Thirty-three samples of commercial hybrids have been analysed for test weight (TW), thousand-kernel weight (TKW), hard:soft endosperm ratio (H/S), milling time (MT) and total milling energy (TME) through the Stenvert hardness test, coarse:fine material ratio (C/F), break force (HF) and break energy (HWF) through the puncture test, floating test (FLT), kernel dimensions and sphericity (S), protein (PC), starch (SC), lipid (LC), ash (AC) content and amylose:amylopectin ratio (AS/AP).Total grit yield (TGY) has been obtained through a micromilling procedure and used to compare the efficiency of the tests to predict the dry-milling performance.