The African Farming Systems Update Project. Farming systems and food security in Africa: Priorities for science and policy under global change. Technical Annex: FS Characterization with GAEZ Data

In 2012, the government of Australia established the Australia International Centre for Food Security (AICFS) to help achieve food and nutritional security in Africa through the provision of focused research and capacity building. Hosted by the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR), AICFS research will help boost the productivity and commercial orientation of smallholder agriculture and support the improvement of livelihoods in a sustainable manner. The Centre undertakes medium to long-term end-user driven collaborative agricultural research for development and it develops education and training programs as well as strategies that build innovation and R&D capacity; and deploy research outputs and encourage take up by smallholder farmers. The AICFS research will contribute to informing the agenda for food security in Africa as well as underpin the development of the strategic orientation and program portfolio of AICFS. One of the research foci is the update of earlier farming systems work (Dixon et al 2001) in the African Farming Systems Update Project: “Farming systems and food security in Africa: Priorities for science and policy under global change”. This work aims to fill a current gap for a suitable text on African farming systems for university courses. It will also provide a valuable resource for governments in their efforts to understand and harness the key trends that are expected to influence farming systems evolution over the next fifteen years as well as for academic programs that AICFS plans on developing. A workable number of farming systems was selected for the purpose of targeting policy makers who need relatively large-scale tendencies for planning. Among the 14 systems identified in the 2001 study, thirteen farming systems were defined based on agro-ecological criteria. Farming systems and subsystems definitions and map classes follow a rigorous basis and explicit set of principles. The first principle applied is to have the continental level farming systems map classes align with length of growing period (LGP) boundaries. LGP is a component of agro-ecological zones (AEZs) that include amongst others, climate, soils, terrain and land cover resources inventories. The LGP map used is from the GAEZ version 3.0, released by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and FAO through their GAEZ data portals in May 2012. As a further contribution to the African Farming Systems Update Project, IIASA provided farming system characterizations with biophysical and agronomic GAEZ data. This work is documented in this technical annex

Scarcity and abundance of land resources: Competing uses and the shrinking land resource base

Widespread hunger and rising global food demands (FAO, 2009) require better use of the world's water, land and ecosystems. For an estimated world population of about 9 billion in 2050, agricultural production has to increase by about 70 percent globally and by 100 percent in developing countries. An enormous effort is required to achieve the implied annual growth of nearly 1.5 percent (Bruinsma, 2009; Fischer, 2009; Godfray et al., 2010). The following policy challenges are of particular concern: Agricultural water withdrawals amount to 70 percent of total anthropogenic water use, and irrigated crops account for 40 percent of the world's total production (FAO, 2003). This makes the agriculture sector of critical social importance, responsible for massive environmental impacts and vulnerable to competition for land and water resources. Land and water uses for food production regularly compete with other ecosystem services. Ignoring such conflicts over resource use and tradeoffs can lead to unsustainable exploitation, environmental degradation and avoidable long-term social costs. Overcoming this limitation requires better understanding and management of competing uses of land, water and ecosystem services. This includes robust expansion of food and bio-energy production, sustaining regulating ecosystem functions, protecting and preserving global gene pools and enhancing terrestrial carbon pools. The prospect of meeting future water demand is limited by the declining possibilities of tapping additional sources of freshwater, and by the decreasing quality of water resources caused by pollution and waste. Freshwater resources are unevenly distributed, and many countries and locations suffer severe water scarcity (MEA, 2005). Climate change is happening, and further global warming in the coming decades seems unavoidable (IPCC, 2007). Food and water provision, land management, and the protection of nature face the immediate need to develop location-specific coping strategies, to use resources differently, to reduce systemic volatility and to safeguard the full range of ecosystem services. The range of land uses for human needs is limited by environmental factors including climate, topography, and soil characteristics. Land use is primarily determined by demographic and socio-economic drivers, cultural practices and political factors, such as land tenure, markets, institutions and agricultural policies. Good quality and availability of land and water resources, together with important socio-economic and institutional factors, is essential for food security. FAO, in collaboration with IIASA, has developed a system that enables rational land-use planning based on an inventory of land resources, and evaluation of biophysical limitations and production potentials. The Agro-Ecological Zones (AEZ) approach is based on robust principles of land evaluation. The current Global AEZ (GAEZ-2009) offers a standardized framework for the characterization of climate, soil and terrain conditions relevant to agricultural production, which can be applied at global to subnational levels

Regional Population Projections for China

Considering the size and the regional diversity of China, a prudent analysis of many economic and policy issues needs to consider the regional differences in climate, soil, water, and other natural resource endowments, population density, and social and economic development. Future-oriented multi-regional assessments require regionally detailed scenarios. A key component of such scenarios is the evolution of the population in different regions. For studies of land-use change and agriculture, such regionally disaggregated population projections are needed for estimating regional food demand and regional labor supply. These scenarios can also serve as background information for modeling development-induced migration, if migration migration processes are explicitly modeled. With Chinas increasing integration in the world economy, the number of studies analyzing different features of this process has been booming recently. An increasing number of studies undertake their assessments at some level of regional detail and need regional scenarios to provide background information about the geographical distribution of people. The regional population projections presented in this report are developed for use in such studies. The report combines national-level demographic scenarios for the period 2000 through 2030 with information about the provincial population distribution from the year 2000 census and projections of provincial birth-rate, death-rate, rate, urbanization, and interprovincial migration based on historical data. Results are available at three levels of regional resolution and age-group aggregation. This report presents the regional population projections at two levels. At the first level, the provinces are merged into eight economic-geographical regions. This level of aggregation makes modeling activities more tractable, but it still preserves a reasonable degree of spatial homogeneity. At the more detailed level, we consider the 31 provinces as the officially defined jurisdictions delineate them (as of 2000). The present report contains tables of urban, rural, and total population aggregated to three main age groups: 0-14, 15-64, and 65 and above for the provinces and for the eight regions. At the third and most detailed level, comprehensive tables covering 17 five-year age groups, 31 provinces and the 8 regions, rural, urban, and total population are also available

Scenarios of Socioeconomic Development for Studies of Global Environmental Change: A Critical Review

This study (1) critically reviews existing studies of global trends in population, agriculture, and energy with a view toward showing which studies are most useful for which sorts of studies of global environmental change and sustainable development. (2) Synthesizes a single, internally consistent scenario of global changes in population, agriculture, and energy over the next century for use as a "conventional wisdom" reference case for such studies. (3) Creates a number of "surprise-rich" scenarios of world development for use in exploring unconventional, but not impossible, patterns of human activities that might be useful for exploring the outer limits of global environmental change

Biofuels and Food Security: Implications of an Accelerated Biofuels Production

Biofuels development has received increased attention in recent times as a means to mitigate climate change, alleviate global energy concerns and foster rural development. Its perceived importance in these three areas has seen biofuels feature prominently on the international agenda. Nevertheless, the rapid growth of biofuels production has raised many concerns among experts worldwide, in particular with regard to sustainability issues and the threat posed to food security. The UN Secretary General, in his opening remarks to the High-level Segment of the 16th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, stated that: "We need to ensure that policies promoting biofuels are consistent with maintaining food security and achieving sustainable development goals." Aware of a lack of integrated scientific analysis, OFID has commissioned this study, Biofuels and Food Security, which has been prepared by the renowned International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). This seminal research work assesses the impact on developing countries of wide-scale production and use of biofuels, in terms of both sustainable agriculture and food security. The unique feature of this study is that its quantified findings are derived from a scenario approach based on a peer reviewed modelling framework, which has contributed to the work of many scientific fora such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the United Nations (Climate Change and Agricultural Vulnerability, World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg). One of the key conclusions of the study is that an accelerated growth of first-generation biofuels production is threatening the availability of adequate food supplies for humans, by diverting land, water and other resources away from food and feed crops. Meanwhile, the "green" contribution of biofuels is seen as deceptive, with mainly second-generation biofuels appearing to offer interesting prospects. Sustainability issues (social, economic and environmental), the impact on land use, as well as many risk aspects are amongst the key issues tackled in the research. With the publication of this study, OFID seeks to uphold its time-honored tradition of promoting debate on issues of special interest to developing countries, including the OFID/OPEC Member States

Biofuels and Food Security

Biofuels development has received increased attention in recent times as a means to mitigate climate change, alleviate global energy concerns and foster rural development. Its perceived importance in these three areas has seen biofuels feature prominently on the international agenda. Nevertheless, the rapid growth of biofuels production has raised many concerns among experts worldwide, in particular with regard to sustainability issues and the threat posed to food security. The UN Secretary General, in his opening remarks to the High-level Segment of the 16th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, stated that: "We need to ensure that policies promoting biofuels are consistent with maintaining food security and achieving sustainable development goals." Aware of a lack of integrated scientific analysis, OFID has commissioned this study, Biofuels and Food Security, which has been prepared by the renowned International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). This seminal research work assesses the impact on developing countries of wide-scale production and use of biofuels, in terms of both sustainable agriculture and food security. The unique feature of this study is that its quantified findings are derived from a scenario approach based on a peer reviewed modelling framework, which has contributed to the work of many scientific fora such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the United Nations (Climate Change and Agricultural Vulnerability, World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg). One of the key conclusions of the study is that an accelerated growth of first-generation biofuels production is threatening the availability of adequate food supplies for humans, by diverting land, water and other resources away from food and feed crops. Meanwhile, the "green" contribution of biofuels is seen as deceptive, with mainly second-generation biofuels appearing to offer interesting prospects. Sustainability issues (social, economic and environmental), the impact on land use, as well as many risk aspects are amongst the key issues tackled in the research. With the publication of this study, OFID seeks to uphold its time-honored tradition of promoting debate on issues of special interest to developing countries, including the OFID/OPEC Member States

Towards indicators for water security - A global hydro-economic classification of water challenges

Following a risk-science perspective IIASA's Water Futures and Solutions Initiative has developed a novel indicator for measuring water security and water challenges. A hydro- economic classification depicts countries and/or watersheds in a two-dimensional space using normalized indicators of economic-institutional coping capacity and hydrological complexity. Lacking adequate data on institutional capacity that was acceptable to stakeholders, we use in a first attempt GDP per capita as proxy for economic-institutional coping capacity. Hydrological complexity is measured by an weighted indicator based on four component indicators: i) total renewable water resources per capita; ii) intensity of water use; iii) runoff variability; and (iv) dependency of external water resources. Indicators were elected to provide global data coverage and future projections using the results from global hydrological and water use models. Here we create a hydro-economic classification of countries for the year 2000 using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization AQUASTAT database and ISI-MIP hydrological model results