Agricultural practices are undermining our ability to feed ourselves in the future, according to a two year study of satellite data.
It shows that degraded soils, dried-out aquifers, polluted waters and the destruction of natural forest and parkland by agriculture are all seriously threatening food supplies for the planet.
The results were released jointly by the International Food Policy Research Institute, the World Resources Institute, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the World Bank.
"It's a health check up for the Earth, and the diagnosis is poor," says Adlai Amor from the WRI.
The report, Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Agroecosystems, is the first study to use actual satellite data rather than statistical methods to assess the planet's ability to provide food for its exploding population.
Overdrawn
The situation today seems promising: on average, we now produce 20 percent more food per person than in 1961. But after an expected 1.5 billion increase in population over the next 20 years, the report says providing food will become a serious challenge.
Among the report's revelations are warnings that:
Agriculture consumes 70 per cent of the freshwater withdrawn annually by humans and is draining more water than is being replenished by rainfall, causing water tables to fall
Up to 30 per cent of the world's forests areas have been converted to agriculture
Soil degradation, including nutrient depletion and erosion, is widespread
Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Director General of IFPRI, says: "We must not continue to deplete water resources, or soil nutrients, faster than they can be replenished. By analogy, you cannot continue to take more out of your bank account than you put in. Sooner or later, you'll run out of money."
The report is part of a series that are assessing fresh water, coastal, forest and grassland ecosystems. The entire project will cost $20 million and take place over four years.
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Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems
This study analyses quantitative and qualitative information and develops selected indicators of the condition of the world's agroecosystems. We assess condition in terms of the delivery of a number of key goods and services valued by society: food, feed and fiber; water services; biodiversity; and carbon storage. We also attempt to assess pressures on, and current state of the underlying natural resource base. To this end we include an additional section dealing with soil resource condition, both as a determinant of agroecosystem capacity to produce goods and services and as a consequence of agroecosystem management practices.
Agroecosystem extent and change
We define an agroecosystem as "a biological and natural resource system managed by humans for the primary purpose of producing food as well as other socially valuable nonfood goods and environmental services." The study first locates the global extent of agricultural lands within which these ecosystems are situated, using a satellite-derived land cover database common to all PAGE ecosystem studies. Although this data source allows agricultural extent to be approximated, with some significant regional limitations, it is not adequate for systematically identifying major agricultural land cover types within the agricultural extent. Furthermore, data on actual production systems and management practices-critical to understanding the potential sustainability and environmental consequences of agriculture-do not exist at regional or global scales (and certainly not in spatial formats). Thus, our representation of agroecosystems is generally limited to tabular summaries at a commodity or major land use level of aggregation and in a spatial context that reflects geopolitical rather than production system sub-divisions.
Conversion of forest and grassland for agriculture has had significant impacts on all goods and services. The predominantly positive effects on food outputs have usually been matched by correspondingly negative effects on the provision of water, biodiversity, and carbon storage services and on the quality of the soil resource. We developed several indicators that reflect the status of these changes and that flag land-use trade-offs in pursuing extensive versus intensive agriculture. Increasing yield correspondingly reduces land conversion pressures, but implies the adoption of more intensive production practices that might lead to other negative environmental effects.
Agroecosystem goods and services
Indicators of condition and value for agricultural and environmental goods and services were determined in consultation with agroecosystem experts as moderated by data limitations. Wherever possible, the spatial distribution of indicator values is shown within the satellite-derived global extent of agriculture, and indicator trends are presented in tabular formats. Indicators are developed for the following:
Agricultural extent and the climatic characterization of agricultural land
Food, feed, and fiber land use and yields, intensity of production inputs, and value of food outputs in monetary, nutrition, employment, and income terms
Water services, irrigation water use and efficiency and watershed modification
Agrobiodiversity, habitat conversion, and habitat quality of agricultural land
Carbon storage in agricultural soils and vegetation, and agriculture's role in greenhouse gas emissions
Many issues are not represented or are poorly represented in the above list. These include water quality, threats to wild terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, human health, and impacts on the global nitrogen cycle. Livestock and agroforestry-based agroecosystems are also poorly represented, largely because of the difficulties of adequately locating extensive pasture and tree crops with the available satellite database. As will become evident, better data exist for those factors related directly to food production and markets. Environmental and ecological issues within agroecosystems have, until relatively recently, received little attention and relevant data is scarce above the local level.
Some indicators are related to multiple goods and services. For example, pesticide use relates to enhanced crop yields, reduced biodiversity, and increased water pollution. An increase in fertilizer application rate from an existing low level may lead to greater food production, improved soil fertility directly and indirectly (by producing more crop residues), and pose no threat to water pollution. However, that same increase at an already high level of application may provide a limited gain in productivity and pose an aquatic pollution threat. Caution is required, therefore, in interpreting any change in indicator value as representing a better situation when it actually may reflect a worse situation from the perspective of another good or service. This underscores the likely existence of trade-offs when attempting to enhance multiple agroecosystem outputs. Furthermore, correlation between indicators can make it difficult to interpret simultaneous changes in multiple indicators. One way to limit this difficulty, not presented here, is to posit the likely direction and extent of change in the value of each indicator that might arise from a given change in each of the other indicators. This would greatly aid the interpretation of observed changes in multiple indicators.
Because different levels and mixes of management skill, scientific and local knowledge, and other inputs can produce a different range of goods and service from the same set of natural resource inputs, there is no single measure of agroecosystem capacity even for a single good or service. Capacity is continually being redefined by the adoption of new technologies and resource management strategies, as well as by evolving institutions and markets, and changing agricultural and environmental policies. One example presented in this report is the observed increase in overall agroecosystem capacity to produce cereals as measured by a yield indicator, with a simultaneous decline in the long-term biophysical capacity because of continuous nutrient mining. Each section concludes, therefore, with a brief qualitative review of the factors influencing appropriate measures of capacity, but we do not attempt to quantify current or future capacity per se. The proposed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment will go beyond this PAGE study in part by developing ecosystem management scenarios that should allow one to evaluate agroecosystem capacity in specific contexts.
As agriculture has become an increasingly dominant influence on global ecosystems, pressures have mounted for agroecosystems to contribute a greater share of society's environmental service needs. However, there are often significant trade-offs between the provision of agricultural and environmental outputs from agroecosystems, holding other conditions constant. Thus, the development of new policies, technologies, and institutional arrangements will be essential if we are to expand the "production possibility frontier" and obtain more agricultural and environmental outputs from the world's agroecosystems.
In developing such agroecosystems, society will need to draw on all means at its disposal, including modern biological, agricultural, environmental, and information sciences, as well as the local knowledge of farmers and others. Three broad, interlinked strategies are identified as worthy of further attention in helping to achieve this goal: increasing agricultural productivity (defined using input measures that include natural resource consumption as well as labor, capital, and other purchased inputs); reducing the negative environmental impacts of agriculture; and rehabilitating environmental goods and services within and beyond agroecosystems that would be beneficial for agricultural goods and services.
Current systems of economic valuation fail to reflect not only the long-term value of environmental services from agroecosystems, but often even their current monetary value to users or providers (e.g., increased costs of water purification resulting from agricultural pollution or subsidized provision of irrigation water). New institutional mechanisms are needed to develop effective markets in environmental goods and services. This includes mechanisms to internalize the costs of environmental damage and the benefits of environmental protection into agricultural production and marketing decisions. Such efforts are likely to be most successful where there is a clear, politically expressed perception of environmental scarcity or threat. This will likely happen in areas of population or production pressures, rural and urban poverty, or threatened biodiversity.
Many innovative technologies, systems, institutions, and policies can increase the provision of both agricultural and environmental goods and services from agroecosystems, and improve the well-being of producers and consumers. Only a few, however-such as minimum tillage, organic production of high-value vegetables, integrated pest management, and some agroforestry practices-have been adopted on a regional or global scale. Others are emerging, for example, organic production of traditional export commodities such as coffee and bananas in Costa Rica and Colombia. Greater effort is needed to generate innovations in more environments and farming systems, to scale up successful strategies, and to rapidly disseminate information on successes and failures.
A dynamic agricultural economy, supportive policies for agricultural development and investment, and strong institutions for information dissemination, research, and marketing are essential, although not sufficient to promote more environmentally friendly production systems. Farmer investment in good land-husbandry practices tends to increase in the following situations: where agricultural markets perform more effectively, reducing the costs of inputs and increasing effective prices received by farmers; where profitable farming opportunities raise the value of agricultural land and water; where technological change makes higher, sustainable yields possible; and where land tenure is secure.
Farming systems, agricultural technology, and the mix of production inputs vary markedly across regions. The availability of land, labor, technology, and capital resources (and, hence, their relative prices) directly affect this variation. Institutions, practices, and technologies required to support more multifunctional agroecosystems will also take different forms in different regions. This presents difficulties for agricultural research and development policymakers. For example, should they spend more on developing technologies that are better adapted to specific local conditions and are likely to impact more limited areas or, say, to spend less by importing and adapting a more broadly applicable solution that may have less impact in any given locale. One of the ways to accelerate the search for appropriate solutions would be to promote institutional mechanisms that foster local screening of new technologies and practices, and whose findings could be fed back into formal technology evaluation systems.
In areas where there are more capital intensive production systems and stronger regulatory capacity, such as Europe and North America, it is more feasible to introduce policies, such as tax and transfers, that internalize major environmental costs and benefits. Similarly, improved efficiency in water use could be fostered by promoting water markets. The political challenge lies in convincing producers and consumers to accept such price-increasing policies. There is mounting evidence that consumers are willing to pay for environmental improvement and (real or perceived) improved food safety, especially in more affluent regions of the world. In developing countries where there are more poor people who cannot afford food price increases, and where regulatory frameworks are likely less effective, solutions may lie in more public-investment based options, including technology, infrastructure, and institutional innovation.
Capital intensive farming systems are generally able to maintain and even improve their productive capacity for food and fiber outputs through the use of purchased inputs and capital investments that can ameliorate or compensate for changes in natural resource conditions. Still, such production activities often give rise to negative effects off-site such as increased water pollution and greenhouse gas emission. Under less capitalized systems, resource degradation has more direct, on-site human welfare consequences. In particular, poor farmers, who rely more on the inherent quality of the resource base, can least compensate for land degradation, loss of wild sources of food, and natural sources of fuel, tools, and building supplies.
The economic process of globalization is fundamentally reshaping the structure of agricultural production and consumption and the scope of environmental policy. Efforts to improve the quality of agroecosystems and, thus, make them more productive, for both agricultural and environmental outputs, must seek out the opportunities that globalization provides. Institutional innovations, such as food-source certification ("organic," "sustainably grown") now make it more feasible for consumers to communicate their demand for agricultural product quality and for the environmental attributes of production systems. And global commitments related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emission control are creating international markets in carbon sequestration and emission reductions that provide incentives for developed country investment in developing countries. More proactive efforts might be required to meet the needs of large agriculture-dependent populations likely to be bypassed by the benefits (if not the risks) of globalization, because of a lack of infrastructure, investment resources, technology, and institutions.
Where proper local support exists trade offers promising opportunities for farmers to use land and grow products in ways that are resource enhancing. For example, the global diversification of human diets and processing techniques for new food and feed products are expanding markets for tree crops that can be grown in an environmentally sustainable fashion in many tropical and subtropical agricultural regions now considered "marginal." This offers opportunities for employment, economic development, poverty reduction, and improved food security in many poor parts of the world. More proactive efforts are needed to support such diversification, through new technology development for production, processing, storage and use, and promotion of well-functioning market institutions for these new products.
The revolution in communications and information technology should also be harnessed to promote sustainable agriculture. Such applications include:
accelerating the flow of information regarding successful technological or institutional innovations, e.g., international science, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and local university use of Internet technologies;
improving the resolution, reliability, and availability of satellite data, the growing use of geographical information systems (GIS), and more cost-effective means of handling such geographically referenced data; and
integrating advanced technologies in production systems in ways that both enhance productivity and reduce environmental impacts, such as precision agriculture and drip irrigation.
It is remarkable how much controversy still prevails about the nature, extent, and significance of such key issues as soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and pesticide risks because data are scarce, partial, or too closely linked to advocacy, rather than independent, scientific enquiry. Persistent data gaps limit our ability to monitor the scale and location of environmental problems and successes in the context of agriculture. And significant knowledge gaps, such as in soil biology, limit our ability to design agroecosystem management strategies that enhance positive production system synergies, both biotic and abiotic. More and better-targeted research and development can overcome these weaknesses but would require greater political commitment. Tasks that merit continued public investment include improved satellite monitoring of land cover, soil and water degradation and carbon storage, and the collection of data on land use and resource management practices. There is also a strong case for looking beyond individual ecosystems at cross-ecosystem synergies; for example, the production of biofuels or innovative marine products that have food, feed, or fiber value could reduce food production pressures on agroecosystems, allowing them to contribute more to environmental goods and services. These and many other options are worth further examination by stakeholders in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA).
The science and practice of environmental measurement and valuation in the context of agricultural ecosystems are in their infancy. Development of better methods for spatial, intertemporal, and integrated systems analysis is essential for improved ecosystem assessment and for promoting cost-effective monitoring of the impacts of technological, institutional, and policy change.
Fostering the development of agroecosystems that exhibit high levels of agricultural productivity as well as contribute more (or consume less) environmental goods and services will require appropriate policy support. Promising approaches include transfer payments to farmers for environmental services, taxation of agricultural wastes, and transformation of waste products to recycled commodities. Further work is needed to conceptualize alternative policies and document the performance of pilot implementation.
The MEA should support international initiatives that seek to advance agricultural and environmental monitoring efforts on a global basis and in spatially referenced formats. The goal should be to help harmonize remote sensing and cross-country survey programs and products, linking them to more detailed local and national monitoring initiatives. Such information networks should support the capacity to keep abreast of changing natural resource and productivity conditions of the world's major agricultural lands.
The collection of remotely sensed and related spatial data is insufficient to interpret changing agroecosystem conditions. Agroecosystems are highly managed, and it is the specific detail of how they are managed that determines their long-term capacity to produce agricultural goods and environmental services. Initiatives are needed to support the standardization and regular compilation of land use and land management data. The most feasible long-term options to collect this type of data probably involve networks operated by and for local communities.
The databases, indicators, and collaborator networks developed through the PAGE studies provide a significant resource and should be fully integrated into the MEA activities. One application, for example, might be to link more precise local agroecological and production system characterization into the global-scale schema developed by the PAGE. The PAGE data sets might also provide a sampling framework for stratifying agroecosystem types that are regionally or globally representative and that may serve as foci for organizing MEA activities.
This first attempt at evaluating the state of the world's ecosystems was structured according to major biomes: agroecosystems, coastal ecosystems, forest ecosystems, grassland ecosystems and freshwater systems. Many important and often more controversial ecosystem changes occur in the transition areas between ecosystems, such as agricultural productivity in forest margins, and water allocation between agriculture and natural wetlands. We recommend that MEA activities be structured around regional activities that provide incentives to undertake more integrated ecosystem assessments and that seek to better understand, for example, how to meet local goods and service needs by the integrated, or at least harmonized, management of different ecosystems.
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