Globally, marginal lands make up about 21 percent (2.74 billion ha) of the total land (13.5 billion ha) area. However, about 1 558 million ha of these lands are used for agriculture, out of which about 224 to 300 million ha is classified as agriculturally marginal areas.

From a demographic perspective, nearly 1.75 billion people (38 percent of global rural populations) live on remote less favoured and marginal agricultural areas and nearly 1.6 (out of 1.75) billion live in developing countries. From a socioeconomic perspective food insecurity, and poverty remain predominately rural, with nearly 10 percent of the world’s population or 734 million people living on less than USD 1.90 a day (2015 est.) and more than 820 million people (11 percent of the global population) remain undernourished, the majority of whom live in marginal areas of the low-income countries. A vast majority of the population depending on agriculture in marginal environments is continued to be highly vulnerable to multiple stresses and off track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of achieving ending poverty in all its forms (SDG1) and zero hunger (SDG2) by 2030. The COVID-19 pandemic has already exacerbated the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of agri-food systems including all the activities and processes affecting the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food and pushed an additional 83 to 132 million people into food insecurity.

The setback throws into further doubt the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) especially in marginal environments. In post COVID era, there is, a strong need to boost agricultural production by improving productivity of agriculture and food production for achieving food security and ending poverty especially in the marginal areas. This paper presents the potential of marginal lands for food security and poverty reduction through sustainable and regenerative agriculture.

It presents the outcome of a systematic review on the multidimensional and complex nature of marginality and the factors that drive or characterize marginality in the broader context. The aim of the paper is to draw a working definition for agricultural environments that are considered as marginal in the context of a given agricultural economy and use it to identify the extent of global and regional marginal areas and its hotspots. Moreover, the paper attempts to explore the combinations of underlying causes of agricultural marginality and proximate factors that correlate with marginality as well as opportunities and barriers faced by the rural poor living. Authors Ahmadzai, H.; Tutundjian, S.; Dale, D.; Brathwaite, R.; Lidderr, P.; Selvaraju, R.; Malhotra, A.; Boerger, V.; Elouafi, I.