Stigende mangel på agerjord og vand blotlægges i stor statusrapport fra FNs Fødevare- og Landbrugsorganisation – men også positive tegn.
ROME, 28 November 2011: Widespread degradation (forringelse/nedslidning) and deepening scarcity of (mangel på) land and water resources have placed a number of key food production systems around the globe at risk.
This poses a profound challenge to the task of feeding a world population expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, according to a new FAO report published Monday.
“The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture” (SOLAW) notes that while the last 50 years 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.”
Today 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,” the report says.
No region is immune: systems at risk can be found around the globe, from the highlands of the Andes to the steppes of Central Asia, from Australia’s Murray-Darling river basin to the central United States.
Agricultural systems at risk
At the same time, as natural resource bottlenecks are increasingly felt, competition for land and water will become “pervasive” (udbredt/gribe om sig), the report suggests.
This includes competition between urban and industrial users as well as within the agricultural sector – between livestock (husdyr), staple crops (grundnæringsmidler), non-food crop, and biofuel production.
And climate change is expected to alter the patterns of temperature, precipitation (nedbør) and river flows upon which the world’s food production systems depend.
As a result, the challenge of providing sufficient food for an ever-more hungry planet has never been greater, SOLAW says — especially in developing countries, where quality land, soil nutrients and water are least abundant.
– The SOLAW report highlights that the collective impact of these pressures and resulting agricultural transformations have put some production systems at risk of breakdown of their environmental integrity and productive capacity, said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, adding:
– These systems at risk may simply not be able to contribute as expected in meeting human demands by 2050. The consequences in terms of hunger and poverty are unacceptable. Remedial action needs to be taken now.
Warning signs
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.
But one of the “warning signs” flagged by the SOLAW report is that rates of growth in agricultural production have been slowing in many areas and are today only half of what they were during the heyday of the Green Revolution.
Overall, the report paints the picture of a world experiencing an increasing imbalance between availability and demand for land and water resources at the local and national levels.
The number of areas reaching the limits of their production capacity is fast increasing, the report warns.
25 percent of the Earth’s lands are degraded
Læs videre på http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/95153/icode
Se også http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94315
