Solutions for a cultivated planet: Addressing our global food production and environmental sustainability challenges

Abstract

In the coming years, continued population growth, rising incomes, increasing meat consumption, and expanding biofuel use will place unprecedented demands on the world’s agriculture and natural resources1-4. These pressures are already overwhelming parts of the food system and environment: An estimated 1 billion people are chronically hungry5,6, and agricultural practices are having a major impact on biodiversity, greenhouse gas concentrations, and land and water resources7-9. As a result, agriculture faces the challenge of meeting growing food demands while simultaneously reducing damages to the environment. While the gravity of this challenge is enormous, there are many opportunities to increase global food supplies and reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture. Here we present a new analysis of possible solutions to our global food production and environmental sustainability challenges, using new geospatial data and modeling tools. Our analysis shows that tremendous progress toward addressing both challenges can be made by: (1) halting agricultural land expansion, particularly in the tropics; (2) closing “yield gaps” on existing, underperforming agricultural lands; (3) dramatically increasing the water, nutrient and resource efficiency of cropping systems; and (4) shifting diets and increasing the efficiency of food distribution systems. We find that these four strategies, taken together, provide the means to more than double global food production, while greatly reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.