Competition for land

Abstract

A key challenge for humanity is how a future global population of 9 billion can all be fed healthily and sustainably. Here, we review how competition for land is influenced by other drivers and pressures, examine land-use change over the past 20 years and consider future changes over the next 40 years.Competition for land, in itself, is not a driver affecting food and farming in the future, but is an emergent property of other drivers and pressures. Modelling studies suggest that future policy decisions in the agriculture, forestry, energy and conservation sectors could have profound effects, with different demands for land to supply multiple ecosystem services usually intensifying competition for land in the future.In addition to policies addressing agriculture and food production, further policies addressing the primary drivers of competition for land (population growth, dietary preference, protected areas, forest policy) could have significant impacts in reducing competition for land. Technologies for increasing per-area productivity of agricultural land will also be necessary. Key uncertainties in our projections of competition for land in the future relate predominantly to uncertainties in the drivers and pressures within the scenarios, in the models and data used in the projections and in the policy interventions assumed to affect the drivers and pressures in the future.

Innovation in Resourcing Geological Materials as Crop Nutrients

“…A key function of soil is to deliver the major and minor nutrients that are needed by all plants, irrespective of whether or not they are specially bred or arise from genetic modification. Given that the land area for food production per capita has decreased from 0.415 to 0.214 ha between 1961 and 2007 (Gregory and George 2011) and that average yields of cereal need to rise from 3.23 t ha À1 in 2005/ 07 to 4.34 t ha À1 in 2030 (Smith et al 2010), it is necessary to ensure that soils can deliver the nutrients that plants require. Improvements in nutrient use efficiency are essential for future food production and include improvements to fertilizer design as well as plant breeding and/or genetic modification (Gregory and George 2010).…”

Climate change and sustainable food production

“…This has given added impetus to the realisation that future increases in food supply need to be met without increasing the agricultural area, i.e. to derive more agricultural product from the same area (1,8) .…”

“…415 ha in 1961 to 0 . 214 ha in 2007 (8) . Put another way, had the increases in yield of the last 60-70 years not been achieved, almost three times more land would have been required to produce crops to sustain the present population; land that does not exist except by using some that is unsuitable for cropping.…”

Effects of intensive agriculture in the structure and functioning of tropical headwater streams

“…These anthropogenic pressures are more severe in tropical countries (SMITH et al, 2010), increasing the likelihood of ecosystem degradation. Due to all these factors acting simultaneously when affecting aquatic communities, it is likely that interactions of physical and chemical variables and biological communities in tropical streams will cause responses in a different range to that observed in temperate streams.…”

“…Holding the remaining potentially cultivable areas for agriculture and increasing in urban areas and megacities, environmental problems in the tropics are continuously growing (GUPTA, 2002;SMITH et al, 2010). The accelerated development is degrading the freshwater habitats, which contain about 9.5% of the described animal species in one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth (DUDGEON et al, 2006;WANTZEN et al, 2006;BOULTON et al, 2008).…”