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Abstract Where land-use change and particularly the expansion of cropland could potentially take place in the future is a central research question to investigate emerging trade-offs between food security, climate protection and biodiversity conservation. We provide consistent global datasets of land potentially suitable, cultivable and available for agricultural use for historic and future time periods from 1980 until 2100 under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, available at 30 arc-seconds spatial resolution and aggregated at country level. Based on the agricultural suitability of land for 23 globally important food, feed, fiber and bioenergy crops, and high resolution land cover data, our dataset indicates where cultivation is possible and how much land could potentially be used as cropland when biophysical constraints and different assumptions on land-use regulations are taken into account. By serving as an input for land-use models, the produced data could improve the comparability of the models and their output, and thereby contribute to a better understanding of potential land-use trade-offs.

The increase in needs for agricultural commodities is projected to outpace the growth of farmland production globally, leading to high pressure on farming systems in the next decades. Here, the authors investigate the future impact of cropland expansion and intensification on agricultural markets and biodiversity, and suggest the need for balancing agricultural production with conservation goals.