A new report by Friends of the Earth, which measured the dependency on food produced elsewhere of various global regions, has revealed that Europe has the largest ‘land-footprint’, in terms of reliance on the use of land outside its borders, of all the regions investigated. image expired

The report, which was released today, calculates different national and regional ’land footprints’ – land used domestically plus land used overseas to provide imported products such as crops, clothing and wood, minus the land used for exports. Europe was shown to use 640 million hectares of land a year, the equivalent of 1.5 times its own area in land. Furthermore, the European average land consumption is 1.3 hectares per capita, while countries such as China and India averaged under 0.4 hectares per capita.

The UK and Germany each import nearly 80 million hectares per year, making them the fifth and third biggest land importers globally, behind the US (242m ha) and Japan (171m ha). The UK alone was found to use an area around three times its physical size to produce all the agricultural and forestry it consumes. Friends of the Earth blamed the “high and rising” demand for meat, dairy, wood and other land-hungry products in Europe, including controversial biofuels, for the unfavourable results.

Stan Blackley, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said, “Dependency on imported land is contributing to climate change and biodiversity loss, and it is a major driver in land grabbing and land rights violations in the developing world.

"For economic, social and environmental reasons, we need to reduce our land footprint, by, for example, supporting local and domestic businesses and supply chains, and reducing our resource use, not just in the UK, but across Europe as a whole. We need to reduce our reliance on land outside our boundaries, and live more within our own means."

The NGO called upon policy makers in Britain to investigate means of reducing consumption, as well as leading by example and curbing their own consumption, after the amount of foreign land used by Britons was seen to increase by 16 per cent in the last few years of the study. Upon releasing its report, Friends of the Earth recommended Europeans cut the amount of waste they produce, make moves to avoid land-hungry biofuels and consume less but better quality meat and dairy.

With Germany, UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Spain all in the top ten most land import dependent countries in the world, Friends of the Earth Europe said it is "clear Europe’s land footprint must be reduced, and that targets should be set to achieve this". In September, the European Commission acknowledged this; the Commission admitted there was a need to address Europe's land consumption and proposed a two-year discussion on resource use measurement and possible targets to curb consumption across the bloc.