Land Sparing vs Land Sharing Simulator (2D)

Region food target

Fixed production target 25 kt

Strategy tuning

Land-sparing farm intensity 70%

Land-sharing farm intensity 30%

Higher intensity yields more food per hectare, so less land is needed — but land-sparing's intensive land holds almost no wildlife, while land-sharing's low-intensity land keeps some wildlife value the lower its intensity.

Region species mix

Habitat specialists 50%

Specialists need genuinely untouched habitat; generalists tolerate wildlife-friendly farmland too.

View

Biodiversity comparison

🌾 Land sparing –

🌿 Land sharing –

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Sparing farm / reserve

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Sharing farm / reserve

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How it works

The region has a fixed total area. Farming a hectare at higher intensity produces more food per hectare, so meeting a fixed production target takes less land — the leftover land becomes reserve. Land sparing pushes intensity up and dedicates the rest to an untouched block; land sharing keeps intensity down (with wildlife-friendly elements woven into the farmland itself), which means covering more total land to hit the same target, leaving less spare land for a separate reserve.

Habitat specialists count only reserve hectares toward their score — farmland gives them nothing, however wildlife-friendly. Generalists count reserve hectares at full value and farmed hectares at a partial value that rises as farming intensity falls. The region's total biodiversity score blends both groups by their share of the species mix, so the same landscape geometry scores differently depending on who lives there.

Fixed production target — both strategies must hit exactly the same food output; only how the land is arranged differs.
Farm intensity sliders — control yield-per-hectare (and thus land needed) independently for each strategy.
Species mix — shifting toward specialists rewards land sparing's large contiguous reserve; shifting toward generalists rewards land sharing's larger total wildlife-friendly footprint.

🌾 LAND SPARING

🌿 LAND SHARING

Intensive farmland Wildlife-friendly farmland Untouched reserve Generalist species Habitat specialist