The contribution of small farms to local food supply, food security and food sovereignty is widely acknowledged at a global level. In the particular case of Europe, they often are seen as an alternative to large and specialised farms. Assessing the real role of small farms has been limited by a lack of information, as small farms are frequently omitted from agricultural censuses and national statistics.

Environmental policies and regulations have been instrumental in influencing deforestation rates around the world. Understanding how these policies change stakeholder behaviours is critical for determining policy impact. In Queensland, Australia, changes in native vegetation management policy seem to have influenced land clearing behaviour of landholders. Periods of peak clearing rates have been associated with periods preceding the introduction of stricter legislation. However, the characteristics of clearing patterns during the last two decades are poorly understood.

Land supply elasticities determine the rates of land conversion in global policy models. However, they are only available for few countries in the world. Therefore, analysts seeking to improve the spatial resolution of their models are forced to impose regionally homogeneous parameters over highly heterogeneous regions. This article estimates spatially explicit land supply elasticities using gridded data for the American continent. These estimates reasonably reproduce changes in land use observed at different levels of geographical aggregation across the continent.