Footprint analysis reveals the appropriation of land resources from a consumer’s perspective. This report presents a novel hybrid land-flow accounting method for the calculation of land footprints, employing a globally consistent top-down approach and combining physical with environmental-economic accounting. It delivers detailed results for cropland, grassland and forest land footprints for Germany and the EU28 for the years 1995 to 2010, broken down by origin, type and use.

This report provides an in-depth review of the current state of the art in measuring land footprints. It identifies differences in available accounting methods and indicates their shortcomings. It offers options and gives clear recommendations for the further development of actual and virtual global biomass and land flow accounting methods.

Beyond area-based land footprint indicators, additional information is needed to assess the sustainability of land use. This report discusses extensions of area-based land footprints with meaningful impact-oriented indicators for the assessment of the effects of different consumption patterns on the ecosystems and sustainability of land use. It discusses: System indicators, which considers globally very different potential land productivities, deforestation footprint, energy use in agriculture, and irrigation water use in agriculture. It introduces the methods developed for the quantification of system indicators for cropland and grassland footprints and for the deforestation footprint, and presents results for Germany and the EU.

The paper summarizes the most important results of the scientific project "Evaluation of the Common Agricultural Policy II". Land use data sets were used to in order to analyse how the 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has affected the environment. The results show that none of the greening measures included in the CAP (maintenance of permanent grassland, ecological priority areas, crop diversity) managed to contribute significantly to an improvement of the environment. However, the paper shows also how future measures integrated in the Common Agricultural Policy can be constructed in order to be more effective. Funding for green measures that is not generally based on area size, but is based on the foregone profits of the farmers, can lead to more positive environmental effects in general and especially in highly productive arable farming locations.