A b s t r a c t. Based on a holistic defnition of land use, including the six main functions of soil and land, five of them competing with agriculture in space and time, new approaches in the conceptualization and perception of sustainable land use are developed. Sustainable land use is explained as a local arid/or temporal harmonization of all main uses of land, minimizing irreversible ones. Agricultural land use depends on all the other uses of soil and land and can only be sustainable when these are sustainable as well.