Land degradation is becoming worse in severity and extent across many regions of the world, with croplands, in particular, declining in function and productivity, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a new report.
Prior to the release of the report last Wednesday, U.N. Environment Program-funded research had estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of the world's 1.5 billion hectares of cropland suffered from some level of degradation. Now, using satellite imagery for the years between 1981 and 2003, the FAO researchers estimate that 24 percent of all land surface area is depleted.
Despite the world undergoing a crisis of food supply shortages, funding and research dedicated to global land degradation is sparse. In this report, the FAO called for individuals, communities, and governments to dedicate "renewed attention" to the state of the world's soil, citing food security and climate change mitigation as reasons for concern.
Consequences of land degradation include reduced productivity, farmer migration, food insecurity, ecosystem failure, and biodiversity decline. Cropland occupies only 12 percent of global land area, but it accounted for 20 percent of the land considered degraded. When this occurs, the poor often struggle to raise enough money for the fertilizers that could avoid reduced yields.
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http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37604
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