Trends In Land Use And Crop Production

Extract: Technological change will be essential in increasing crop production to meet the future world food needs because the world's population is increasing at a much faster rate than is the increase in usable agricultural land. Although only about half of the world's estimated 3 billion hectares of arable land is currently used for crop production, the remainder is generally believed to be only marginally productive. Cropland area has actually decreased in some regions of the world. This study measures agricultural land availability and trends and provides specific land constraints to world food production projections.