FAO: The degradation of the Earth is endangering food

An extensive degradation and the increasingly acute shortage of land and water resources endangers several key systems of food production in the world and is a profound challenge to feed a world population that by 2050 there will be reached 9 billion people.

This was stated yesterday in a statement the Organization of food and Agriculture of the United Nations (FAO). He added that "the State of the resources of land and water in the world for food and Agriculture indicates that if in the past 50 years there was an increase in the production of food, in many places, the achievements have been associated with management practices that have degraded land and water systems on which food production depends".

Today - continued the report - many of these systems run the risk of progressive loss of its production capacity by a mixture of excessive population pressure u000aand practices and agricultural uses unsustainable.

There is no immune region, across the planet systems in danger, from the Highlands of the Andes to the steppes of central Asia, from the watershed of the Murray-Darling from Australia to the center of the United States, said the note.

At the same time, while they receive increasingly more bottlenecks in the field of natural resources, competition for land and water become "ubiquitous", he indicated.

This includes, according to the statement, the competition between industrial and urban users and within the agricultural sector, between livestock production, of staple crops, the non-food crops and the production of biofuels.

"And expected that climate change patterns of temperature, rainfall and flow of the rivers, which depend of the world's food production systems", spoke of.

Consequently, never u000ahas been increased the challenge of providing sufficient food for a world that increasingly is more hungry - explained - especially in developing countries, where it is less abundant good quality land, the soil nutrients and water.

The report highlighted that the set of impact of these pressures and consequent agricultural transformations have put some production systems at risk of disintegration of the environmental integrity and their ability to productive.

These systems at risk - he added - could simply not able to contribute as expected to meet human demands by 2050.

Consequence, from the point of view of hunger and poverty are unacceptable. "Corrective action should be taken now", said Jacques Diouf, director general of the FAO.

Between 1961 and 2009, global agricultural area grew 12%, but agricultural production rose by 150%, thanks to a significant increase of the u000ayields of major crops

But one of the "warning signs" which noted the report is that the agricultural production growth rates have decreased in many areas and today only reach half of what was at the height of the revolution green.

The report emphasizes the image of a world facing a growing imbalance between availability and demand for land and water levels in local and national.

The number of zones that reach the limits of its productive capacity is increasing rapidly, warns the report.

25% Of the lands of the planet are degraded, points out.

Another 8% presents a moderate degradation, 36% is in terms of stability or with a slight degradation and 10% are classified as land to "improve", qualifies.

The surface remaining of the planet is naked (around a 18%) or covered by masses of water continental (around el 2%. u000aexplains.

The degradation FAO definition goes beyond the deterioration of the lands and waters in themselves, and includes an assessment of other aspects of ecosystems affected, such as the loss of biodiversity.

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