The coming famine of the midcentury is likely to teach us a renewed respect for grain fields, rice paddies, orchards, market gardens, and the soil that sustains them all. Believe it or not, the world is running out of high- quality soil. In one sense, we passed “peak land” a long time ago. A report by Rabobank shows that the area of food production has declined from 0.45 hectare (1.1 acres) per person in the 1960s to 0.23 hectare (0.6 acre) currently and will keep on falling as population rises, to around 0.18 hectare (0.4 acre) in 2050.
Another way to interpret this, however, is as a tribute to the remarkable achievements, over the past half century, of the world’s farmers and agricultural scientists, who now put significantly more food on our plates using less land through advanced broadacre farming systems and efficient smallholder agriculture. It shows just what can be achieved when we put our minds to it. This also underscores, however, that food security is a race— between the things we can do to increase it, such as using fertilizers, fossil fuels, better crop rotations, and improved varieties, and the things we do to destroy it, such as losing soil, water, and nutrients, exacerbated by our increasing population and demand for food. Our destiny depends on the state of this race in the middle of the twenty- first century.
Superficially, the world appears to have plenty of spare land, but— like water— it isn’t always located in the most favorable climatic regions or where the major centers of population and increases in food demand are most likely to occur. Asia has developed three- quarters of its available stock of land, whereas South America has developed only about one- fifth. To understand the significance of this contrast, we need to compare the available land area with the likely increase in food demand. Combining the two tables shows that food demand in Asia is likely to more than double, but there is room only for a very modest 25 percent expansion in farmland. In West and North Africa the situation is more dire, with one and a half times more food required and only 13 percent more land to provide it. In Latin America the outlook appears more reassuring, with food demand likely to double but four times the current farmed land area available to satisfy it. In Rus sia and the member countries of the Or ga ni za tion for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), land supply is well ahead of likely increase in domestic food demand. In sub- Saharan Africa, the situation is delicately poised with a fourfold increase in food demand expected— and roughly four times the current farmed area available.
These bald numbers hide unpalatable truths, however, including, first, the fact that much of this “new” land is unlikely ever to be farmed because of the environmental destruction and loss of landscape function it would cause. Second, we are losing productive land through accelerated soil degradation faster than we can open up new areas. Third, because much of this new land has poor soils, it will require massive inputs of fertilizer and energy, or drainage, to make it productive. These issues lend weight to a view that humanity has already reached, or has passed, “peak land.”
Changing Climate and Growing Concerns of Future Food Supplies
