Location:
International Food Policy Research Institute
2033 K Street, NW, Washington, DC
Fourth Floor Conference Facility
Friday, 30 January 2004
10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m
R.S.V.P.

Abstract

As rising populations and incomes increase pressure on land and other resources, agricultural productivity becomes increasingly important for continued improvement in food supplies and food security. Land quality affects agricultural productivity, but disentangling land quality’s effects from those of other factors has been difficult. The interactions between biophysical processes and economic choices are complex, and data are scarce, so estimates of land degradation’s impact on productivity vary widely. This makes it difficult to assess impacts on food security or the environment, and thus to identify appropriate policy responses.

Contributors to this book-including soil scientists, geographers, and economists-analyze new data on soils, climate, land cover, agricultural inputs and outputs, and a variety of socio-economic factors to provide new insights into the links between land quality, agricultural productivity, and food security. They find that land degradation generates productivity losses that are relatively small in most areas and at the global level-because farmers generally have incentives to address degradation and its impacts. But land degradation does pose problems in areas where soils are fragile and markets function poorly. The number of people with nutritionally inadequate diets in low-income developing countries would decline by an estimated 5 percent, or 40 million people, if yield losses to land degradation in those countries were reduced from an average of 0.2 percent per year to an average of 0.1 percent per year over the next decade. Key to these reductions are measures to strengthen property rights, infrastructure, education, and research to enhance farmers’ incentives to invest in sustaining land quality.

Results are summarized in a report from the Economic Research Service, Linking Land Quality, Agricultural Productivity, and Food Security, available online at www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer823. Copies will be available at the seminar.