Land use and landscapes are constantly changing. Cultivated landscapes, which shape the appearance of our rural areas, have emerged after hundreds of years of human intervention. This intervention was serious: forests were cleared, moors drained, rivers straightened and fields combined.

Today, there is a broad social consensus that the further development of these cultivated landscapes must be, if possible, prudent and take into account ecological goals. Forest laws, nature conservation legislation, water legislation, construction legislation, hunting legislation, EU agricultural policy and other regulations impose a very narrow framework on entrepreneurs and citizens who wish to use and shape living nature.

Has this political framework been pegged out correctly? On the one hand, even stiffer intervention by the legislator is called for because many arable areas are still being sealed off as a consequence of construction measures, the conversion of large areas of grassland into arable land or because maize cultivation prevails in a few regions.

On the other hand, the criticism is levied that our economy is scarcely able to adapt to changing framework conditions because of the rigid framework. For example, the proposal is advanced that given the global scarcity of raw materials, more water should be used for aquaculture and irrigation measures or higher-yielding trees should be planted in this country.

The Thünen Institute is heavily involved in tackling the problem of increasing land use conflicts. For the social debate and for political decisions we endeavour to prepare the best possible foundations by 

• estimating the ecological and economic effects of various land use options at various locations,
• analysing how various forms of land use can be arranged and combined in an area to allow for as many social goals as possible to be achieved.

With this approach we are following in the footsteps of Johann Heinrich von Thünen, who already recognised 200 years ago that a land use strategy according to the motto "One size fits all" would not be reasonable. The challenge here is to come up with regional differentiation in land use systems which when taken together makes possible the sustainable, best possible satisfaction of diverse social wishes.