Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably. A multifaceted and linked global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security, different components of which are explored here.

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Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People

Increasing population and consumption are placing unprecedented demands on agriculture and natural resources. Today, approximately a billion people are chronically malnourished while our agricultural systems are concurrently degrading land, water, biodiversity and climate on a global scale. To meet the world's future food security and sustainability needs, food production must grow substantially while, at the same time, agriculture's environmental footprint must shrink dramatically. Here we analyse solutions to this dilemma, showing that tremendous progress could be made by halting agricultural expansion, closing 'yield gaps' on underperforming lands, increasing cropping efficiency, shifting diets and reducing waste. Together, these strategies could double food production while greatly reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.

https://escholarship.org/content/qt6xw5g085/qt6xw5g085.pdf?t=ovfwpc

Solutions for a cultivated planet

Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

This is a review of worldwide land degradation problems. Four themes are emphasized: delineating and estimating the magnitude of soil erosion, quantifying erosion and sedimentation impacts on land productivity, establishing quantitative values for erosion-causing parameters, and implementing global and regional soil and water conservation programs. Papers deal with both developing and developed countries and illustrate how erosion control techniques used in developed countries can or cannot be applied in developing countries.

https://gendocs.ru/docs/29/28948/conv_1/file1.pdf

Soil Erosion and Conservation

Livelihoods perspectives have been central to rural development thinking and practice in the past decade But where do such perspectives come from, what are their conceptual roots, and what influences have shaped the way they have emerged? This paper offers an historical review of key moments in debates about rural livelihoods, identifying the tensions, ambiguities and challenges of such approaches A number of core challenges are identified, centred on the need to inject a more thorough-going political analysis into the centre of livelihoods perspectives This will enhance the capacity of livelihoods perspectives to address key lacunae in recent discussions, including questions of knowledge, politics, scale and dynamics

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03066150902820503

Livelihoods perspectives and rural development

Soil degradation in the Ethiopian highlands and mountains was initiated with the introduction of agriculture several thousand years ago. Favourable conditions attracted early human settlers to this largest mountain complex in Africa and gradually all agriculturally suitable areas were occupied, including marginal land on slopes highly susceptible to soil erosion and degradation. The extent and distribution of soil degradation in the highlands as a whole is outlined and shows significantly greater damage in the northern and eastern regions which were settled first. There, the poor soil quality today results in reduced crop productivity and greater vulnerability to famine. Actual rates of soil loss are estimated according to the Universal Soil Loss Equation; the highest soil erosion rates occur in the western areas which clearly indicates that soils here are degrading more rapidly than soils in the north. The natural process of soil regeneration in the west is slow, with rates ten times lower than actual soil loss rates. However, measures introduced by the government in the last ten years are being applied by the Ethiopian associations of peasants. A more secure future requires that increases in production will exceed population increases and further, that soil depletion can be drastically reduced in order to sustain production in the long term.

Degradation and conservation of the resources in the ethiopian highlands

Land use and land cover changes that occurred from 1957 to 1995 in the Dembecha area, Gojam, in the Northwestern highlands of Ethiopia, were monitored using a geographic information system (GIS) and a remote sensing approach with field verification. The study area covers 27,100 ha and is representative of Gojam, which is known for its cereal production and export of surplus to major cities of the country. However, given the age-old tradition of clearing increasingly steeper land for cultivation and the lack of appropriate land use policies, productivity is currently heavily threatened by soil degradation. The results show that the natural forest cover declined from 27% in 1957 to 2% in 1982 and 0.3% in 1995. The total natural forest cleared between 1957 and 1995 amounts to 7259 ha. This is 99% of the forest cover that existed in 1957. On the other hand, cultivated land increased from 39% in 1957 to 70% in 1982 and 77% in 1995. The greatest expansion occurred between 1957 and 1982 (about 78%) and ...

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Implications of Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics for Mountain Resource Degradation in the Northwestern Ethiopian Highlands

Much concern has been raised about population increase in the highlands of Ethiopia and its potential to decrease runoff from the upper Nile Basin to the lowland countries of Sudan and Egypt. The present article examines long-term data on population, land use, land management, rainfall, and surface runoff rates from small test plots (30 m2) and micro-catchments (73–673 ha) in the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Although the data were generated only on small areas, the results of the analyses can nevertheless be used to draw some conclusions relevant to the highland–lowland water controversies that have persisted in this particular region for many decades. The data indicate that there have been no significant trends over the long term in total annual rainfall in the highlands over the past 30–50 years. Nevertheless, test plot surface runoff rates are clearly influenced by land use and soil degradation, and hence by population density and duration of agriculture. In effect there is 5–30 times mo...

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Hans Hurni

Papers

Degradation and conservation of the resources in the ethiopian highlands

Implications of Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics for Mountain Resource Degradation in the Northwestern Ethiopian Highlands

The Implications of Changes in Population, Land Use, and Land Management for Surface Runoff in the Upper Nile Basin Area of Ethiopia

Land degradation, famine, and land resource scenarios in Ethiopia.

Erosion - productivity - conservation systems in Ethiopia