Productivity-carbon trade-offs in Ghana: Quantifying the roles of irrigation and organic farming in land-use optimisation

Agricultural expansion in Ghana continues to drive deforestation, posing a major challenge to balancing food production with forest carbon conservation. While Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (SAI) is widely promoted, its ecological and land use planning implications remain underexplored in policy contexts. This study investigates the trade-offs between agricultural intensification and forest carbon conservation, aiming to identify land use configurations that optimise both productivity and environmental sustainability within Ghana’s national planning framework. Using a 31-year FAOSTAT dataset, a socio-ecological systems approach integrating Random Forest and polynomial regression models was applied to capture non-linear dynamics. A multi-objective optimisation framework was used to derive Pareto-optimal land use allocations under empirical constraints, reflecting real-world policy and adoption limitations. Findings reveal that land use composition – particularly the cropland-pasture balance – has a stronger influence on forest carbon stocks than intensification alone. Low adoption rates of irrigation and organic farming limit their national impact. The optimal land use mix (58.85% cropland, 41.15% pasture, 1% organic, 3.01% irrigated) achieves 92% of a composite objective prioritising productivity (70%) and carbon conservation (30%). These results underscore the need for spatially differentiated land use policies that incorporate zoning, targeted incentives, and coordinated landscape governance. The study shows that the ecological impacts of intensification depend on its scale, type, and socio-ecological context. For policymakers, this highlights the need to move beyond uniform SAI approaches toward spatially targeted strategies that integrate land-use zoning, practice-specific incentives, and coordinated landscape management to balance agricultural productivity with forest conservation.