LAND.
Globally, agriculture occurs within a context of land scarcity, both because the world’s best arable land is already under cultivation and because agricultural practices have led to the degradation of significant amounts of farmland. At the same time, the rising demand for non-food products (feed, fuel, and fibre) is putting additional pressure on agricultural production and on land use.
Cultivated systems cover 25 percent of the globe’s terrestrial surface. A 10–20 percent increase in current crop area and pasture-land may be needed to meet growing food demand. This increase would come mainly from grassland and forestland (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005a, b). Demand for non-food agricultural products could push the need for land significantly higher. Such an expansion will have both direct and indirect impacts on other ecosystems and particularly on biodiversity. Intensification — that is, practices that allow for greater output from a given amount of land — will be key to minimizing the conversion of natural land to cropland and thereby preserving terrestrial biodiversity. At the same time, if poorly managed, intensification can increase runoff of fertilizers and pesticides into water bodies, adversely affecting public health and inland and coastal aquatic ecosystems.
Unsustainable agricultural practices have already resulted in land degradation, including desertification, deforestation, salinization, and soil erosion. The causes underlying these forms of land degradation include high population density, poverty, lack of land tenure, and lack of access to extension services and other forms of knowledge, infrastructure, and markets (Nkonya et al. 2011). Distortionary trade policies, output price policies, and input subsidies, particularly for water and fertilizer, have also contributed to degradation.
One way of assessing land degradation is to measure the loss of net primary production—essentially, the decline in vegetative vigor. Figure 3.5 shows the loss of net primary production from 1981 to 2003. Substantial degradation has occurred in most parts of the world. Past efforts to combat land degradation have often focused on drylands, where degradation causes desertification. However, the highest rate of degradation took place in humid and sub-humid areas (marked by rectangles in Figure 3.5), which accounted for 78 percent of land degradation over this period (Nkonya et al. 2011). The immediate causes of land degradation include biophysical causes, including topography, which determines soil erosion hazard, and climatic conditions, such as rainfall, wind, and temperature. Unsustainable land management, such as deforestation, forest degradation, soil nutrient mining, and cultivation on steep slopes, also contributes directly to land degradation.
For agricultural producers, farm-level land degradation can lower crop yields and raise production costs because farmers need to apply more fertilizers and other inputs to offset yield losses. Degradation can also have off-site costs in the form of excessive runoff of fertilizers and pesticides, siltation of dams and irrigation systems, eutrophication of lakes and oceans, and damage to mangrove swamps that support rich fisheries and provide many ecosystems services such as water filtration and prevention of erosion (Rosegrant, Nkonya, and Valmonte-Santos 2009).
Forests have important rainfall-regulating functions. Tropical forests can soak up storm water and then release it slowly, reducing flood and drought cycles. Water-regulating functions are particularly important in upper watersheds, where forests also help reduce soil erosion and thus prevent river sedimentation. Despite these and other important ecosystem functions, deforestation has also been significant in much of the world, as shown in Figure 3.6. The most serious deforestation has taken place in Africa and Central and South America. Some good news is also evident: reforestation is occurring in East, South, and West Asia and in the Caribbean. China has led the way in East Asia, with aggressive policies supporting reforestation. However, deforestation has accelerated in Southeast Asia.
One outcome of the scarcity and degradation of farmland is the growing number of deals giving land-scarce or resource-demanding countries access to farmland in land-abundant countries. Of the approximately 1,000 international land deals (many of which are implemented with national partners) recorded as of May 2012, 46 percent targeted land in Sub-Saharan Africa and 37 percent land in Asia (International Land Coalition 2012). Among the 665 international land investments that report a specific crop, 55 percent relate to biofuel production, 19 percent to forestry products for wood and fibre and flowers, and the remainder to food production. Altogether, as of May 2012, the recorded deals affected 57 million hectares of agricultural land, or 1.2 percent of global agricultural area (International Land Coalition 2012). It is important to note that foreign investment in land also has important implications for local water availability and use (Anseeuw et al. 2012a).
Figure 3.7 presents the size of land deals as a share of agricultural area for 52 target countries, relative to the importance of agriculture in each country and its GHI score. Four countries where agriculture accounts for a small share of gross domestic product (GDP) (less than 5 percent) and where hunger is low or moderate (a GHI score of less than 10) received land investments affecting about 1.2 million hectares. In contrast, 32 countries where agriculture accounts for a higher share of GDP (more than 5 percent) and hunger is serious or alarming (a GHI score of more than 10) received investments affecting about 41 million hectares, accounting for the bulk of the total investment — 73 percent.
Thus, the majority of international land deals to date have occurred in those countries that experience higher levels of hunger and where the population and national incomes depend heavily on agriculture. In 17 of those, international land deals account for more than 5 percent of current agricultural area, and in 7 countries, land deals account for more than 10 percent of total agricultural area: Cambodia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Liberia, the Philippines, and Sierra Leone. Out of the 245 land deals in these seven countries where the commodity grown is known, 75 deals or 31 percent are for trees, including acacia, eucalyptus, rubber, and flowers; 112 deals or 46 percent of all investments with known crops relate to biofuels; and the remainder are for other agricultural commodities.
Research to date reveals high social and environmental risks of such investments, while the promised benefits often fail to materialize (see also case studies in Chapter 4). Both anecdotal and emerging case study evidence has shown that local and national land rights systems in most of these countries remain weak; as a result, local communities that once used some of the land acquired by foreign governments and companies have lost their traditional or customary rights.
One country, Republic of Congo, has a high GHI score, a low share of agricultural GDP (less than 5 percent) and limited international land investment (approximately 100,000 hectares); 13 countries have a low GHI score partnered with agricultural GDP greater than 5 percent, accounting for 25 percent of total land investment areas. This group includes such agricultural heavyweights as Argentina, Brazil, and China, as well as Malaysia, which accounts for the largest number of land deals as a share of national agricultural area. Other countries in this group with investments greater than 500,000 hectares include Ghana, Peru, and Ukraine.