Over the coming 35 years, agriculture will face an unprecedented confluence of pressures, including a 30 percent increase in the global population, intensifying competition for increasingly scarce land, water and energy resources, and the existential threat of climate change. To provide for a population projected to reach
9.3 billion in 2050 and support changing dietary patterns, estimates are that food production will need to increase from the current 8.4 billion tonnes to almost 13.5 billion tonnes a year. Achieving that level of production from an already seriously depleted natural resource base will be impossible without profound changes in our food and agriculture systems. We need to expand and accelerate the transition to sustainable food and agriculture which ensures world food security, provides economic and social opportunities, and protects the ecosystem services on which agriculture depends. This report is aimed primarily at policy makers and others who make or influence national and institutional decisions and actions, it represents the first step in accelerating the transition to sustainable food and agriculture, ending hunger and poverty, and realizing the future we all want.
FAO projections indicate that 80 percent of the additional food required to meet demand in 2050 will need to come from land already under cultivation. There is little scope for expansion of the agricultural area, except in some parts of Africa and South America. Much of the additional land available is not suitable for agriculture, and the ecological, social and economic costs of bringing it into production would be very high. In addition, 33 percent of land is moderately to highly degraded owing to the erosion, salinization, compaction and chemical pollution of soils (FAO, 2011a). Drought and desertification are responsible for the loss of about 12 million hectares of land each year (UNCDD, 2013). Over the past decade, some 13 million hectares of forests were converted to other land uses, mainly agriculture, at the cost of a myriad of ecosystem services (FAO and JRC, 2012).