By Michael Ricciardi

On Monday, the UN released the results of the first ever global study on the state of Earth’s land. The main finding: 25 percent of all land is “highly degraded” making it unsuitable for agriculture.

The implications of this finding are enormous; the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that farm output must increase by 70 percent by 2050 to accommodate the food needs of an estimated 9 billion humans.

That translates into another billion tons of grain foods and 200 million tons of livestock meat (note: as standards of living rise in developing nations, the demand for high-quality meat also rises).

The problem or challenge here is that most of the world’s arable land is already being farmed, and often using primitive or unsustainable farming practices. These practices (e.g., over-tilling) can lead to soil erosion, loss of surface water and loss of biodiversity.

Further contributing to the lack of available land for agriculture is land-use conversion to bio-fuel crops which directly competes with food crops (additionally, animal feed crops also compete with human food crops).

This, combined with poor farming practices, leaves “key food-producing systems” unable to meet human food needs by 2050.

Consequently, the UN report, ‘State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture’ calls for “sustainable intensification” of agricultural productivity on existing farmland.

In a recent public statement at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, FAO director-general Jacques Diouf said:

“The consequences in terms of hunger and poverty are unacceptable. Remedial actions need to be taken now. We simply cannot continue on a course of business as usual.”

The report compares current food production rates to those following the ‘Green Revolution’ (which introduced new technologies, fertilizers, pesticides and high-yield crops) during the fifty year period from 1961 through 2009. During this time, though agricultural land increased just 12 percent, the total agricultural food output increased a remarkable 150 percent.

But that is not the case today where the rate of productivity in many areas is slowing, with some producing only half as much as was produced during the Green Revolution.

In additional to the ‘highly degraded’ rating of 25 percent of the world’s land, the report also found that another 8 percent is “moderately degraded” and 36 percent is “slightly degraded” or “stable”. Only 10 percent of the world’s land is ranked as “improving”.

The remainder of land is either barren of covered by in-land water sources.

High risks regions include:

Western Europe (due to intensive agriculture-linked pollution of soil and aquifers and a loss of biodiversity), the highlands of the Himalayas, the Andes, the Ethiopian plateau and southern Africa (mostly due to soil erosion coupled with increased intensity of floods), and in southeast and eastern Asia’s rice-based food systems (where land has been abandoned partly due to “a loss of the cultural value”).

Additionally, fresh water resources are becoming more scare and more salinated and groundwater is increasingly contaminated by toxins and agricultural run-off.

To meet world water and food needs by 2050, the report recommends more efficient irrigation systems (most are currently below capacity), new farming practices (e.g., “integrated irrigation” and increased fish-farming [aquaculture] to meet protein demands), and more investment in agricultural development.

The estimated cost of investment through 2050 is 1 trillion USD, with an additional 160 billion USD for soil conservation and flood control.

The UN report was released just ahead of the 2-week, U.N. climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, where delegates hope to reach some consensus on how to address curbing GHG emissions. Some media have called the meeting the “last chance” for salvaging the Kyoto Protocol.

Additionally, over-use of NPK fertilizers has damaging effects on the climate (via releasing of N2O and NOx molecules which can become aerosols and deplete ozone). Further, agricultural run-off damages fresh and marine ecosystems by creating hypertrophic conditions and algal blooms (which tend to choke other life forms and destabilize food webs).