Is land more than the sum of its parts?

While science is providing answers to pressing questions of the capacity of our land to produce food, the way in which land is used is constrained also by the law. Regulatory responses to land use can occur on a number of levels but most of these assume a free market in land as a composite of separate resources to be exploited - minerals, energy stores and water are themselves becoming the subject of discrete property rights generating conflicts between interest holders. Perhaps the way we regulate land needs to take a broader view of its capacity to serve human needs; a view that appreciates it is more than the sum of its parts.