3.2 billion, placing increasing pressure on a declining resource base (Population Division of the United Nations 2008).

Over the past 50 years, the pattern of land use change in developing as opposed to developed economies has been dramatically different (Barbier 2011; FAO 2006; Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011; Ramankutty and Foley 1999; World Bank 2012). In developed countries, cropland area slowed its growth, eventually stabilized and is now declining. As a result, the decline of forest and woodland has halted in developed countries in aggregate, and since 1990, total forest area has increased (FAO 2006). Not only has primary forest area recovered but also the growth in plantations has been strong. In contrast, in developing economies cropland area has continued to expand. In the developing regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America, tropical forests were the primary sources of new agricultural land in the 1980s and 1990s (Gibbs et al. 2010). From 1990 to 2005, cropland in developing countries increased at the rate of 5.5 million ha per year, suggesting that at least 135 million ha of forests, wetlands and other non-cultivated land will be converted to cropland by 2030 (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011). Developing countries will also require new land for biofuel crops, grazing pasture and industrial forestry, and also to replace land lost to degradation (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011).

Consequently, development in low and middle-income economies is accompanied by substantial resource and land exploitation, especially the expansion of the agricultural land base through the conversion of forests, wetlands and other natural habitat. But more importantly, the current pattern of resource and land use has two unique structural features.

First, expansion of less-favored agricultural lands is occurring primarily to meet the subsistence and near-subsistence needs of poor rural households. This is not a new phenomenon; as noted by Coxhead et al. (2002, p. 345), “the land frontier has long served as the employer of last resort for underemployed, unskilled labor”. Yet, this process has become a major structural feature of most poor economies. Many of the world's rural poor continue to be concentrated in the less ecologically favored and remote areas of developing regions, such as converted forest frontier areas, poor quality uplands, converted wetlands, and similar lands with limited agricultural potential (Barbier 2005 and 2010; Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture 2007; CPRC 2004; Dercon 2009; Fan and Chan-Kang 2004; Hazell and Wood 2008; IFAD 2010; World Bank 2003 and 2008). Population increases, rural migration and other economic pressures mean that marginal land expansion continues to absorb the growing number of rural poor in developing economies (Barbier 2011; Carr 2009; Chen and Ravillion 2007; Dercon 2009; Hazell and Wood 2008; Population Division of the United Nations 2008). The result is that the rural poor located on marginal and low productivity agricultural land typically employ traditional farming methods, earn negligible land rents or profits, and have inadequate access to transport, infrastructure and markets (Barbier 2005 and 2010; Banerjee and Duflo 2007; Barrett 2008; Coxhead et al. 2002; Dercon 2009; Hazell and Wood 2008; IFAD 2010; Jalan and Ravallion 1997 and 2002; Maertens et al. 2006; Pichón 1997).

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