Agri-environmental policies have reduced cropland degradation globally

Abstract Cropland degradation is a major threat to agricultural production and the environment. To address this, countries around the world implement a range of public policies. We used global satellite remote sensing data (~83 million measurements of cropland condition from 2001 to 2019) and 2 complementary quasi-experimental impact evaluation methods (difference in discontinuities and difference in differences) to assess the impact of these policies on the state of the world’s cropland. We found that, on average, these policies have improved cropland globally by at least 2% and possibly up to 5%. Country-level heterogeneities reveal effects ranging from 0 to over 20%. This heterogeneity is explained by differences in countries’ institutional and governance characteristics and policy budgets. Moreover, by estimating variation in policy intensity across policy types, we found that agri-environmental payments and soil and land-use regulations were most effective, yielding estimated improvements of 0.8% and 0.9% per additional policy.