Study reveals that environmental damage threatens future world food production.
Food production has more than kept pace with global population growth. On average, food supplies are 24 percent higher per person than in 1961, and real prices are 40 percent lower. However, about 85 percent of the world's agricultural land contains areas degraded by erosion, salinization, compaction, nutrient depletion, biological degradation, or pollution over the last 50 years. The extent of agricultural soil degradation raises questions about the long-term capacity of agroecosystems to produce food. Agroecosystems cover more than a quarter of the global land area, but almost three-quarters of the land has poor soil fertility and about half has steep terrain.