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Land Use should definitely be included. But not in the way that LCA's usually do so.

LCA's mostly use the metric of "Land Occupation" (units = m2), where "greater land occuption" is "worse" because so much of agriculture is so damaging to ecosystems. In general, the Land Occupation metric is a good start because "m2" is tangible, easy to understand, and easily comparable across projects. HOWEVER, what's actually important is the impact of that Land Occupation and it's temporal-spatial context.

Example:

• The environmental impact of 1000 m2 of chemical-heavy corn production is often decreased soil health, damage to biodiversity, and some GHG emissions.
• The impact of 1000m2 of organically managed multi-strata agroforestry systems producing a starch crop (like breadfruit or chestnuts) is often increased soil health, greater biodiversity, and potentially GHG sequestration.
• Both show "1000 m2" of Land Use. But the latter is healing the land, while the former degrades it. In many degraded agricultural and rangelands around the world, we want MORE "Land Occupation" if the impact is regenerative.

In either scenario, the preceding land use must be taken into account:

• If intact rainforest was clear-cut 3 years ago to make room for that 1000 m2 of production, the damage done should be included in the calculations. Same for destruction of deep-rooted grasslands, mangrove deltas, etc.
• If traditionally open agricultural or rangeland land is the preceding land use (usually a 20 year time horizon is used, I prefer 100-year or greater), then the negative land use change from e.g. deforestation is not added to the calculation.

In summary: Land Use should be included, but needs an "impact modifier" on a spectrum from "Degenerative" to "Regenerative" impact.

A few references for further reading:

1. Regenerative Agriculture Continuum
2. The Carbon Opportunity Cost / Forest Delta (webinar recording)
3. The Carbon Farming Solution by Eric Toensmeier

@nmgraham and @NickAzer Yes, including land in the environmental impact assessment makes sense.

The area and quality of land available is critical to survival and quality of life. Land provides an area to capture sunlight and rainfall [two fundamental resources], supports ecosystems and agriculture, provides habitat, and underpins the infrastructure and activities of human civilisation. However, the availability of good quality land continues to be under threat. There are issues with: pollution; soil degradation and erosion; flooding; water availability, quality and demand; mono-culture plantations; and the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity.

We should be aware that unconventional approaches to the production of food, materials, packaging and other products may arise in an XPRIZE challenge and so any assessment framework should support their evaluation too. For example, an industrial type approach might use buildings, renewable energy, nutrients, and a water supply (but no soil) - such as modern hydroponics. Or a similar approach might grow products in a vat. Different contexts may also appear, such as "growing" products in facilities in a desert [lots of renewable sunshine energy in the hot ones], or in the oceans.

On the subject of oceans, we have to be particularly careful that we don't repeat the (land based) mistakes of the past at sea, because its (potential) pollution and ecosystem disruption might initially be less apparent to us land dwellers. This could mean we are late to ring the alarm bells and take action [again]. But more importantly, it is very difficult to control what happens in the oceans - once the genie is out of the bottle. I would suggest that we adopt the Precautionary Principle.