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• Thinking through Globalization
• Mapping the World’s Agricultural Land
• Climbing out of Poverty in South Africa
• The Road Half Traveled

The unprecedented scale of agricultural expansion and intensification to meet the food and fiber needs of a rapidly growing world population raises two principal concerns. First, the productive capacity of many agroecosystems is under threat. Second, intensified agricultural production often causes broader environmental harm. A new global assessment from IFPRI shows just how serious these problems have become.

While farmers with access to appropriate information, inputs, and new technologies may succeed in overcoming the pressures on agricultural land for the foreseeable future, the challenge of meeting human needs may grow ever more difficult over longer periods of time.

To determine the extent of agricultural land use worldwide and assess the status of key goods and services provided by agroecosystems on a global basis, IFPRI scientists led the most comprehensive mapping to date of global agriculture in partnership with World Resources Institute (WRI). A report is now available entitled Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Agroecosystems. Based on analyses of satellite-derived data, digital maps, and tabular data sets, the report is part of a pilot analysis for a larger international initiative, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a comprehensive 10-year scientific assessment that begins in 2001.

"We hope this report will be informative for policymakers and natural resource specialists seeking a global perspective on agroecosystems," says Stanley Wood, an IFPRI scientist. "It provides an indication of the present status of agroecosystems internationally and makes some suggestions on how to better understand and monitor changes in the capacity of these systems to provide environmental as well as agricultural goods and services." Published in December 2000 by WRI and IFPRI, the report will be officially released on February 14 at an IFPRI/World Bank launching chaired by Ian Johnson, World Bank Vice President for Special Programs and chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The report is one of five in-depth ecosystem studies supporting findings that are highlighted in WRI's recently released World Resources 2000-2001, People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life.

Among the main findings in Agroecosystems are the following:

• Crop production can still grow significantly on a global scale over the next several decades, but the underlying conditions of many of the world's agroecosystems, particularly those in developing countries, are already poor and could deteriorate further.
• Soil degradation, including nutrient depletion and erosion, appears to be undermining the long-term capacity of many agricultural systems.
• Most global agricultural production, with the exception of dairy and perishable vegetable production, still derives from intensively managed irrigated and rainfed crop fields located away from major concentrations of population.
• While the net global expansion of agricultural area has been modest in recent decades, intensification has been rapid.
• Significant segments of the populations in the poorest countries cannot afford to purchase additional food. Thus the vast majority of new staple food supplies will need to come from domestic production in developing countries facing high population growth rates and increased threats to agricultural ecosystems.

For additional information, contact Stanley Wood (s.wood@cgiar.org) or Kate Sebastian (k.sebastian@cgiar.org).