An updated report on Europe’s land use has shown the extend of Europeans’ ‘land footprint’ - the area of land outside our borders needed to grow the food on which we rely.

The ‘True Cost of Consumption’ report from Friends of the Earth, released on Thursday, shows that 40% of the land used to supply goods consumed in Europe lies outside of our borders, and takes up an area the size of France and Italy combined. A land footprint is worked out by looking at land used domestically plus land used overseas to provide imported products, minus the land used for exports.

An earlier report from FoE in 2011, looking at  such as foods, clothing and wood, revealed that Europe had the greatest reliance on land outside its borders of any global region, with Germany and the UK having the highest reliance overall on ‘imported land’. The new report, which looks at agriculture alone, warns that Europe’s high reliance on land elsewhere comes with a responsibility to ensure that this does not lead to land grabbing and loss of biodiversity.

The report’s focus on agriculture is because agricultural land use is easier to asses, though FoE said there is still some uncertainty about grassland use. The report’s headline figure is that EU countries rely on a combined total of 269 million hectares a year to provide food - an area 43% larger than the bloc’s total agricultural lands.

The report estimates that almost three quarters (73%) of the land used outside the EU’s borders is related to consumption of animal products; report authors said that to rein this in, people need to adopt more sustainable diets, with fewer animal products. Even so, perhaps the most concerning element in terms of environmental impact is reliance on oils including palm oil and vegetable oils for biofuels, which are driving environmental degradation and increasing reliance on crops produced outside Europe. The report shows there has been a 34% increase in cropland ‘consumed’ by Europeans over the last 20 years, as a result of increased demand for vegetable oils.

Friends of the Earth said its report indicates that degradation of agricultural land, deforestation of natural land or its conversion to agriculture and land-grabbing from local communities are all problems associated with our reliance on so much imported food and agricultural products. The environment group is calling for a three-pronged approach to tackling these problems from governments, through 1) reducing or halting expansion of agriculture into natural areas 2) monitoring the impacts of food produced elsewhere, to ensure more environmentally and socially benign methods are used and 3) supporting changes in consumption that will reduce land footprints and lead to more equitable use of land.

The campaign group wants EU authorities to shift focus from policies that only look at land within EU borders, to ones which consider tools like the ‘land footprint’ idea in light of Europeans’ reliance on production elsewhere in the world. They want policies to consider greenhouse gas emissions, water use and other raw materials used to produce food exported to Europe.

Campaigners are also calling on the EU to phase out ‘first generation’ biofuels and feedstocks (those produced directly from agricultural crops, rather than wastes or byproducts), and is asking leaders to “Promote a reduction of livestock farming in the EU and the growth of crop production for direct human consumption, e.g. protein crops such as beans, soy or lupins.”

Commenting on the findings on Friday, Meadhbh Bolger, resource use campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe said "Overconsumption is eating up ever more land, often with disastrous consequences. It is unjust, irresponsible and unsustainable that we continue to use more than our fair share of global land and are shifting more than one-third of the impacts related to land consumption to ecosystems and communities outside of the EU. It is vital that the EU take steps to measure and reduce Europe's Land Footprint."

Food campaigner Stanka Becheva added, "To reduce our inequitable footprint we need a radical overhaul in how and where we use land. Industrialised agriculture and global food chains are swallowing up land across the globe, damaging the environment and rural communities. We rapidly need a just transition to a greener way of farming that works for all people and the planet."

The full report can be read here.