Minimizing the ecological footprint of food: closing yield and efficiency gaps simultaneously?

Agriculture as a source of food has a substantial spillover
that affects the Earth’s ecosystems. This results in an
‘ecological footprint’ of food: negative environmental
impacts per capita. The footprint depends on the dietary
choice of types and amounts of food, on the non-consumed
part of product flows and its fate (‘waste’ or ‘reused’), on
transport and processing along the value chain, on the
environmental impacts of production per unit area, and on
the area needed per unit product. Yield gaps indicate
inefficiency in this last aspect: resource-use efficiency gaps
for water and nutrients indicate that environmental impacts
per unit area are higher than desirable. Ecological
intensification aimed at simultaneously closing these two
gaps requires process-level understanding and system-level
quantification of current efficiency of the use of land and
other production factors at multiple scales (field, farm,
landscape, regional and global economy). Contrary to
common opinion, yield and efficiency gaps are partially
independent in the empirical evidence. Synergy in gap
closure is possible in many contexts where efforts are made
but are not automatic. With Good Agricultural Practice (GAP),
enforceable in world trade to control hidden subsidies,
there is scope for incremental improvement towards food
systems that are efficient at global, yet sustainable at local,
scales