Page 32 - FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change

Human-directed impacts on food and land-based ecosystems and their implications for food security
targeted for conversion to cropland as they are seen as more or less valuable in environmental terms, in particular climate and biodiversity. Pressure on rangelands for conversion to cropland is likely to increase in the future.14
2.4 Human-directed pressures on water resources
Besides climate, there are many human-directed pressures on water resources. With growing population comes a higher demand for food and improved income levels for a larger segment of the world’s populations. India and China alone account for close to one billion people in the middle income bracket. This brings with it a change and increase
in wider food preferences, in particular, fruit, vegetables and meat products. More water is required for non-food crops, such as biofuels, timber and fibre crops. Besides the urban and industrial demand for water, it is essential for the environment and to support river ecology. Irrigated land is also lost through bad land management and degradation through salinity and water logging. It is clear that the human impact on water resources for agriculture is now far more significant than climate change and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Climate change, therefore, exacerbates a pre-existing issue.
Linked to the rise in water demand for irrigation and food production is the challenge of groundwater depletion. This is especially true in dry areas and because of climate change this demand is likely to increase even further, causing underground depletion as seen in California and India. This in turn, will limit the area that can be irrigated, thus creating food insecurity and increasing soil drought.
2.5 Forest loss and recovery and the role of agricultural intensification
Agricultural intensification (AI) does not always reduce deforestation, nor is it promoted solely for forest protection. There are varying factors that determine whether or not agricultural intensification can save forests. According to Borlaug, increasing agricultural yield will reduce pressure on land or the demand for more land, which becomes on the one hand an agricultural argument.15 But on the other hand, the economic argument is that higher yielding technology makes agriculture more profitable, thus encouraging expansion and placing pressure on forest land and new technologies, while changes in behaviour influence market prices. The same argument applies to the transfer from crops to livestock, with the scope for improving feed efficiency leading to land intensification. Studies from Latin America in 2008 show that farmers tend to expand their land first before increasing their yields if the former is less expensive than the latter (Boeserup’s hypothesis).
The outcome from agricultural intensification with respect to forests (i.e. whether trade-offs or synergies dominate) depends on the type of technology used, the input intensity and the level of change in yield. If the new technology
is labour intensive, land expansion may be constrained in the absence of sufficient labour. Labour shortages may
limit the adoption of conservation agriculture which is labour intensive. Likewise, market forces take effect through product price changes and labour costs (i.e. wages) that result from yield changes, potentially creating incentives
or disincentives to expand production and, hence, land use. A question of scale arises, depending on whether the adoption of conservation agriculture takes place. While it may be a win-lose outcome at the local level, it is a win-win outcome at the global level. A study of oil palm shows that while technological progress in Indonesia and Malaysia has caused forest loss in these countries, the decrease in palm oil prices on the world market as a result of supply expansion has saved forests elsewhere.16 In addition, agricultural intensification is more likely to result in a rebound effect when trade is open and intensification takes place in a region which has comparatively low yields to start with, such as for an African Green Revolution.17
14 Searchinger et al. (2015).
15 Borlaug, N. (2007).
16 Villoria et al. (2014).
17 Villoria et al. (2014)..
FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change, land use and food security