People, Land and Food Production - Potentials in the Developing World

Understanding the nature and dimension of the land and water resources available for food and agriculture development, and the policies available to develop them, have been among the focal points of the work of the Land and Water Development Division of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and of the Food and Agriculture Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. As we anticipate, over the coming decades, a technological transformation of agriculture which will be constrained by resource limitations and which could have environmental consequences, a number of important questions arise: (a) What is the stable, sustainable production potential of the world? of regions? of nations? (b) How does this production potential in specific areas (within countries and groups of countries) compare to the food requirements of the future populations of these areas? (c) What alternative transition paths are available to reach desirable levels of this production potential? (d) What are the sustainable and efficient combinations of techniques of food production? (e) What are the input requirements of such techniques? (f) What are the policy implications at national, regional and global levels of sustainability? Stability and sustainability are both desirable properties of agricultural land resources development. We hold ecological considerations to be of critical importance in answering the questions posed above. This paper presents the results of a recent study entitled "Land Resources for the Populations of the Future" carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Program of IIASA with financial support from the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. The study was designed to quantify potential population supporting capacities of land resources in the developing regions of the world, based on ecological and technological limits to food production. An understanding of these limits is critical to agricultural policy formulation and development planning. This paper highlights policy implications for developing countries

Sustainable Use of Soils and Water: The Role of Environmental Land Use Conflicts

This book on the sustainable use of soils and water addressed a variety of issues related to the utopian desire for environmental sustainability and the deviations from this scene observed in the real world. Competing interests for land are frequently a factor in land degradation, especially where the adopted land uses do not conform with the land capability (the natural use of soil). The concerns of researchers about these matters are presented in the articles comprising this Special Issue book. Various approaches were used to assess the (im)balance between economic profit and environmental conservation in various regions, in addition to potential routes to bring landscapes back to a sustainable status being disclosed

Estimation of Agricultural Production Relations in the LUC Model for China

Chinas demand for feed-grains has been growing fast during the last two decades, largely due to the increasing meat demand. This raises the important question whether China will in the coming years be able to satisfy these increasing needs which has implications that reach far beyond the country itself, especially in the light of Chinas upcoming accession to WTO. The answer depends on many factors, including the policy orientation of the Chinese government, the loss of cropland caused by the ongoing industrialization and urbanization processes, and the effect of climate change on the agricultural potentials of the country. To analyze these issues, the Land Use Change (LUC) Project is engaged in the development of an intertemporal welfare maximizing policy analysis model. The present report presents the input-output relationships for agricultural crops in this model. The specified relationships are geographically explicit and determine the crop output combinations that can be achieved, under the prevailing biophysical conditions across China, from given input combinations in each of some 2040 counties, on the basis of data for 1990. The inputs are chemical and organic fertilizer, labor and machinery. Irrigated and rain-fed land is distinguished as separate land-use types. Distinct relationships are estimated by cross-section for eight economic regions distinguished in the LUC model. The biophysical potential enters as an asymptote in a generalized Mitscherlich-Baule (MB) yield function and is computed on the basis of an agro-ecological assessment of climatic and land resources, including irrigation. The chosen form globally satisfies the required slope and curvature conditions. Estimation results show that all key parameters are significant and are of the expected sign. The calculated elasticities of aggregate output with respect to inputs reflect rather closely the relative scarcity of irrigated land, labor and other inputs across the different regions. It also appears that if account is taken of the distance to main urban centers, the observed cropping patterns are generally consistent with profit maximization. Confirmation is found for the often noted labor surplus in the Southern and South-Eastern regions

Agricultural land use and associated nutrient flows in peri-urban production systems

Urban and peri-urban agriculture could play a pivotal role as a recipient of organic waste. But recycling and reuse of solid and liquid organic waste in peri-urban agriculture requires planning tools flexible enough to capture the diversity of farming systems and to assess their nutrient status over spatial and temporal scales. This work aims at developing a methodology to determine nutrient flows and budgets at farm, village and communal level of peri-urban agricultural systems of Hanoi, Vietnam, by taking into account spatial and temporal variability of crop and nutrient manageme

Land Quality and Landscape Processes

This monograph contains a selection of scientific papers presented on the conference on Land Quality and Landscape Processes, hold in Keszthely, Hungary. It covers topics related to various aspects of land quality including : concepts of assessment; evaluation of biomass productivity ; bioindicators of land quality ; quality assessment of degraded land ; land use related data processingJRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen

Development of a spatial planning support system for agricultural policy formulation related to land and water resources in Borkhar & Meymeh district, Iran

In this study, a system was developed to support agricultural planners and policy makers in land resource analysis, policy formulation, identification of possible policy measures and policy impact analysis. The research is part of a larger programme, aiming at development of a model system to support agricultural policy formulation at national level. The current study focused on methodology development and its implementation in Borkhar & Meymeh district in Esfahan province, Iran. The system comprises three main components, i.e. resource analysis, policy impact assessment and policy evaluation. The biophysical resource analysis was carried out using CGMS, the Crop Growth Monitoring System which includes WOFOST, a generic crop growth simulation model. This model simulates growth of annual crops in the potential and water-limited production situations, based on daily weather data, crop characteristics and soil physical characteristics. For this purpose, crop characteristics of winter wheat and winter barley were calibrated based on research data from the agro-meteorological research center of Kaboutar Abad, Esfahan, Iran. Crop characteristics of silage maize, sugar beet, sunflower and potato were calibrated based on yields of the best agricultural producers in the region. For the weather stations in which solar radiation was not measured, it was estimated from sunshine-hours or temperature, using empirical relations. A sensitivity analysis on method of solar radiation estimation was carried out to test model performance in terms of simulated crop yield and water requirements for winter barley and sugar beet as representatives of winter and summer crops, respectively. Results of this analysis showed that the maximum difference in simulated crop yield based on estimated and measured solar radiation is less than 10%. CGMS was used for land resource analysis at the regional (district) scale. The potentially suitable area for agriculture in the district was identified and classified into 128 homogenous units (referred to in this study as Elementary Mapping Units, EMU) in terms of soil, weather and administrative unit. For each EMU, soil physical characteristics were derived from available soil maps and soil analyses reports. Daily weather characteristics (maximum and minimum temperature, vapor pressure, wind speed, rainfall, and solar radiation) were generated for the centre of each EMU by interpolation of daily weather data of 33 weather stations, located in and around the district. CGMS was then modified to allow calculation of irrigated crop yields. Yields of major crops and water requirements per decade were simulated using CGMS for three irrigation regimes (full irrigation, 20% and 40% deficit irrigation). Fertilizer requirements for the three macro-nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, for each level of crop production were estimated based on soil chemical characteristics, crop yields and nutrient content in economic crop products and crop residues. An alternative methodology was developed for spatial estimation of crop yields, water and fertilizer requirements of crops (alfalfa, melon, watermelon, and colza) that could not be simulated by CGMS, either because of model limitations or lack of data for model calibration. The ratio of current and potential crop yields, referred to as production efficiency, was used as an indicator of management ability of farmers and was used in farm classification. The policy formulation process consists of three steps: i) selection of policy objectives, ii) identification of policy instruments and iii) assessment and analysis of their impacts. In this study, policy objectives and relevant policy instruments were derived from the latest agricultural development documents. A model was developed to assess the impacts of policy instruments and another model for analysis of these impacts from different perspectives. As reactions of farmers to policy instruments may be different, depending on their socioeconomic situation and the biophysical characteristics of their land, a planning (modelling) unit was defined, homogenous in terms of biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics. For this purpose, farms belonging to each of the agricultural production systems (e.g., traditional, cooperative and agroindustrial) were classified into farm types, based on land and water availability, overall production efficiency and average net income per ha. These farm types were combined with land units to form the basic units of analysis, i.e. farm type-land units (FTLU), homogenous in terms of biophysical potential, as well as in resource endowments and management ability of farmers. A distributed linear programming model was developed to assess policy impacts by simulating the response of the various farm types to specific policy instruments. This model is optimizing a utility function, composed of a combination of net income and production cost, subject to various constraints at different spatial scales (e.g., farm type-land unit, farm type, village, and subdistrict). The model was validated based on the conditions of the year 2002-03 by comparing simulated crop yields and total crop production in Borkhar subdistrict with detailed agricultural census data. Indicators, representing the effect/impact of policy instruments on economic, social, and environmental objectives of various stakeholders were selected and quantified in a post-model analysis. In a model experiment, the reactions of the different farm types to three policy instruments, aiming at increasing agricultural water productivity in Borkhar sub-district were simulated. A multi-criteria evaluation technique was used for policy analysis through overall assessment of the various economic, social and environmental indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of various policy instruments. The developed system represents a further step in the development of computeraided decision support systems for land use analysis that have received ample attention in the research community, in response to the perceived needs of policy makers. The consultations with planners in the course of the study, leads to the conclusion, however, that still a long way has to be gone to bridge the gap between the policy makers that are asking questions that land use modelers can not answer and the land use modelers that are generating answers to questions that policy makers are not (willing to) ask(ing). <br/