Desertification and Drought Day, running under the slogan “Food. Feed. Fibre.” seeks to provoke changes in diet and behaviours – such as cutting food waste, buying from local markets and swapping clothes instead of always buying new – can free up land for other uses and lower carbon emissions . Changing consumer and corporate behaviour, having more efficient planning and sustainable practices, could secure enough land to meet the demand for food and supplies.
Plants and animals provide most of our food, clothing and footwear. This means that food, feed (animal) and fibre (for clothing) all compete for arable land. And demand is growing due to population growth and increasing global middle classes.
2020 Desertification and Drought Day will focus on links between production,consumption and land, and the library curated some data and information to help and educate individuals on how to reduce their personal impact.


DID YOU KNOW:
🍛 Food
• About 931 million tons of food — or 17 per cent of all food available to consumers in 2019 and roughly equal to 23 million fully loaded 40-ton trucks bumper-to-bumper, enough to circle the Earth seven times — were trashed by households, retailers, restaurants and other food services, a Food Waste Index Report 2021 says.
• An extra 593 million hectares of agricultural land, an area nearly twice the size of India, will be required by 2050 over 2010 levels. Over the same period, the world will need to produce an extra 74,000 trillion calories, equivalent to an increase in crop calories of 56% (Source)
• Did you know 1km2 of desert locusts can eat the same food as 35,000 people? (Source)
• Stop the waste of food. On 29 September 2020, we celebrate the first observance of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. It also comes during the global COVID-19 pandemic, that has brought about a wake-up call on the need to transform and rebalance the way our food is produced and consumed. Wasting less, eating better and adopting a sustainable lifestyle are key to building a world free of hunger. Little changes to our daily habits can make a huge global impact. Take action. Stop food loss and waste. For the people and for the planet. (Source)
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🌾 Feed
• Twenty-six percent of the Planet’s ice-free land is used for livestock grazing and 33 percent of croplands are used for livestock feed production. (Source)
• Land used for grazing and grain production to feed animals accounts for 80% of agricultural land globally (Source)
• One billion poor people, mostly pastoralists in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, depend on livestock for food and livelihoods. Globally, livestock provides 25 percent of protein intake and 15 percent of dietary energy.(Source)
• With rising incomes in the developing world, demand for animal products will continue to surge; 74 percent for meat, 58 percent for dairy products and 500 percent for eggs. Meeting increasing demand is a major sustainability challenge. (Source)
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👔 Fibre
• By 2030, it is predicted that the fashion industry will use 35% more land for cotton, forest for cellulosic fibers, and grassland for livestock—altogether over 115 million hectares that could be used to grow crops for an increasing and more demanding population or to preserve forest.Fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic meters of water — enough to meet the consumption needs of 5 million people. (Source)
• The amount of clothes bought in the EU per person has increased by 40% in just a few decades (Source)
• Cotton area accounts for only about 2.5% of the world’s arable land. (Source)
• Wool has a high land impact – estimated by DEFRA to be as much as 278 hectares per tonne of fibres (compared with just over 1 hectare per tonne for cotton). (Source)
• Cotton cultivation globally consumes about 16.5% of all pesticides while it is grown on only 2.4% of the world’s arable land (Source)
• A t-shirt used once and then discarded to landfill has 100 times greater production burden environmental impact than a t-shirt used 100 times before being discarded (Source)
• Sub-Saharan African cotton production reached 1.6 million tons in 2017/18, representing 6% of the world total, and production is forecast at 1.6 million tons again in 2018/19 (Source)
• Sub-Saharan cotton area was 5.4 million hectares in 2017/18 (16% of the world total), and the yield was about 290 kilograms per hectare (representing less than 40% of the world average yield) (Source)
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🌻 Biodiversity
• Over human history, out of about 30 000 edible plant species, 6 000 – 7 000 species have been cultivated for food. (Source)
• Today we only grow approximately 170 crops on a commercially significant scale. Even more surprising, we depend highly on only about 30 of them to provide us with calories and nutrients that we need every day. (Source)
• More than 40 percent of our daily calories come from three staple crops: rice, wheat and maize! (Source)
• Bees are a key link in our food chain, visiting and pollinating more than 90% of global food crops and providing us with 2 out of every 3 mouthfuls of food we eat. (Source)
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• MORE on forests, biodiversity, zoonotic diseases ,health and environment Check out our library collection or open the document above with active links to the sources quoted/used