A new report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN concludes that widespread degradation of land and water resources is placing at risk a number of key food production systems around the world, which the agency warns could have disastrous repercussions as the world population continues to grow.

With the global population forecast to reach 9 billion by 2050, the UN FAO is promoting the ‘sustainable intensification’ of agricultural production around the world. The organisation’s experts have said that drastic improvements in agriculture’s environmental considerations are needed in order to meet food security challenges.

In its report, State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW), the FAO notes that, although the last 50 years have witnessed a notable increase in food production, "in too many places, achievements have been associated with management practices that have degraded the land and water systems upon which food production depends." The report reveals a number of those systems "face the risk of progressive breakdown of their productive capacity under a combination of excessive demographic pressure and unsustainable agriculture use and practices,"

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Need for sustainable intensification

Between 1961 and 2009, the world’s cropland grew by 12 percent, but agricultural production expanded 150 percent, thanks to a significant increase in yields of major crops, due for the most part to technological increases referred to as the ‘green revolution’. However, the FAO has warned that the rate of growth in agricultural production is slowing, some chemicals which helped improve yields have been shown to be incredibly polluting or have become less effective and the number of areas reaching the limits of their production capacity is fast increasing.

Among the worrying assertions made in the report is that competition for land and water risks becoming "pervasive" as degradation and, resultantly, scarcity increases. The FAO said this includes competition between urban and industrial users with agriculture, as well as within the agricultural sector itself – between livestock, staple crops, energy and biofuel crops.

25% of land ‘highly degraded’

The UN agency’s SOLAW report provides for the first time ever a global assessment of the state of the planet’s land resources, and an integrated look at land and water resources, which Technical Officer for Land and Environment Information Systems Hubert George explained is because the FAO feel "land and water should not be dealt with separately, they are two factors of production and they should be integrated."

The findings show that already one quarter of the Earth’s land resources are highly degraded. Another 8 percent are moderately degraded, 36 percent are stable or slightly degraded and 10 percent are ranked as "improving."

Furthermore, in key cereal producing areas around the world, intensive groundwater withdrawals are drawing down aquifer storage and removing the accessible groundwater buffers that rural communities have come to rely on. The report reveals “Because of the dependence of many key food production systems on groundwater, declining aquifer levels and continued abstraction of non-renewable groundwater present a growing risk to local and global food production.”

However the FAO estimates that by 2050, rising population and incomes will require a 70 percent increase in global food production; another one billion tonnes of cereals and 200 million tonnes of livestock products produced each year. Hubert George said any increase in production would have to come from land which is already in production; although there is some scope for increasing cropland, almost all improvements would have to be delivered from land which is already used for agriculture. He said that in order to achieve this, improving the efficiency of land and water use is essential.

FAO recommendations

The organisation has outlined a variety of measures for improving the efficiency and resilience of agriculture. It said improvements in water use by agriculture would yield dramatic results; most irrigation systems across the world perform below their capacity, so a combination of improved irrigation scheme management can make water resources go much further. The FAO also recommended investment in local knowledge and modern technology, knowledge development and training to increase water-use efficiency.

Following the report’s release the FAO also renewed calls for increased support for innovative farming practices such as conservation agriculture, agro-forestry, integrated crop-livestock systems and integrated irrigation-aquaculture systems. It has long championed these ‘agroecological’ techniques which have been shown to expand production efficiently while limiting impacts on ecosystems and providing higher resilience to the effects of climate change, especially in regions such as South Asia and East and West Africa, where their implementation has been successful.

The FAO has also called for greater cooperation to achieve global food security. It said governments, institutions sand other policy makers should increase collaboration to ensure all are better equipped to cope with today’s emerging challenges of water and land resource management and able to deliver sustainable intensification.

A map detailing agricultural systems which are at risk is available here.

an interview with Hubert George, Technical Officer, Land and Environment Information Systems and contributor to SOLAW, is available here.

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