Land Sparing vs Land Sharing: Implications for Wild Animal Welfare

The debate between land sparing and land sharing agricultural strategies has significant implications for wild animal populations and welfare at landscape scale.

Key Facts

Land sparing concentrates food production on high-yield land while protecting remaining areas for wildlife
Land sharing integrates wildlife-friendly farming across the production landscape
Studies suggest land sparing often produces better outcomes for biodiversity in high-income countries
Wildlife-friendly farming can support farmland birds and invertebrates in sharing approaches
The choice between strategies is highly context-dependent — no universal solution exists
Both approaches must consider wild animal suffering, not just species counts or biodiversity metrics

Welfare Considerations

The land sparing versus land sharing debate typically focuses on biodiversity conservation, but a welfare lens adds important dimensions. High-intensity spared land may involve industrial farming practices with poor welfare outcomes for farm animals, while wildlife-friendly shared land may support higher wild animal populations but with unpredictable welfare consequences. Wild animals face predation, disease, starvation, and injury regardless of which strategy is adopted. Some welfare advocates argue that reducing the total wildlife population on farmland through sparing may actually reduce aggregate wild animal suffering if wild lives involve net negative welfare. This remains philosophically contested but is increasingly discussed in effective altruism and animal welfare circles.

What You Can Do

Engage with the evidence on land sparing versus land sharing for your local context
Support agricultural policies that simultaneously improve farm animal and wild animal welfare
Consider the welfare dimensions — not just biodiversity metrics — when evaluating farming systems
Donate to organizations working on wild animal welfare in agricultural landscapes
Advocate for wildlife corridors and refuges within any agricultural strategy
Reduce your food footprint to decrease total land required for food production