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Nature | Analysis

日本語要約

Solutions for a cultivated planet

Journal name:
Nature
Volume:
478,
Pages:
337–342
Date published:
DOI:
doi:10.1038/nature10452
Published online

Increasing population and consumption are placing unprecedented demands on agriculture and natural resources. Today, approximately a billion people are chronically malnourished while our agricultural systems are concurrently degrading land, water, biodiversity and climate on a global scale. To meet the world’s future food security and sustainability needs, food production must grow substantially while, at the same time, agriculture’s environmental footprint must shrink dramatically. Here we analyse solutions to this dilemma, showing that tremendous progress could be made by halting agricultural expansion, closing ‘yield gaps’ on underperforming lands, increasing cropping efficiency, shifting diets and reducing waste. Together, these strategies could double food production while greatly reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.

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  1. Allocation of cropland area to different uses in 2000.
    Figure 1: Allocation of cropland area to different uses in 2000.

    Here we show the fraction of the world’s total cropland that is dedicated to growing food crops (crops that are directly consumed by people) versus all other crop uses, including animal feed, fibre, bioenergy crops and other products. Averaged across the globe, 62% of total crop production (on a mass basis) is allocated to human food, 35% for animal feed (which produces human food indirectly, and less efficiently, as meat and dairy products) and 3% for bioenergy crops, seed, and other industrial products. There are striking disparities between regions that primarily grow crops for human consumption (such as Africa, South Asia, East Asia), and those that mainly produce crops for other uses (such as North America, Europe, Australia). Food production and allocation data were obtained from FAOSTAT18, and were then applied to the spatial cropland maps of refs 14 and 15. All data are for a seven-year period centred on 2000.

  2. Meeting goals for food security and environmental sustainability by 2050.
    Figure 2: Meeting goals for food security and environmental sustainability by 2050.

    Here we qualitatively illustrate a subset of the goals agriculture must meet in the coming decades. At the top, we outline four key food security goals: increasing total agricultural production, increasing the supply of food (recognizing that agricultural yields are not always equivalent to food), improving the distribution of and access to food, and increasing the resilience of the whole food system. At the bottom, we illustrate four key environmental goals agriculture must also meet: reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use, reducing biodiversity loss, phasing out unsustainable water withdrawals, and curtailing air and water pollution from agriculture. Panel a sketches out a qualitative assessment of how current agricultural systems may be measured against these criteria compared to goals set for 2050. Panel b illustrates a hypothetical situation in which we meet all of these goals by 2050.

  3. Closing global yield gaps.
    Figure 3: Closing global yield gaps.

    Many agricultural lands do not attain their full yield potential. The figure shows the new calories that would be made available to the world from closing the yield gaps for 16 major crops: barley, cassava, groundnut, maize, millet, potato, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, rye, sorghum, soybean, sugarbeet, sugarcane, sunflower and wheat. This analysis shows that bringing the world’s yields to within 95% of their potential for these 16 important food and feed crops could add 2.3 billion tonnes (5 × 1015 kilocalories) of new crop production, representing a 58% increase. These improvements in yield can be largely accomplished by improving the nutrient and water supplies to crops in low-yielding regions; further enhancement of global food production could be achieved through improved crop genetics. The methods used to calculate yield gaps and limiting factors are described in the Supplementary Information.

  4. Closing the diet gap.
    Figure 4: Closing the diet gap.

    We estimate the potential to increase food supplies by closing the ‘diet gap’: shifting 16 major crops to 100% human food and away from the current mix of uses (see Fig. 1) could add over a billion tonnes to global food production (a 28% increase for those 16 crops), the equivalent of ~3 × 1015 kilocalories more food to the global diet (a 49% increase in food calories delivered).

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Author information

Affiliations

  1. Institute on the Environment (IonE), University of Minnesota, 1954 Buford Avenue, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA

    • Jonathan A. Foley,
    • Kate A. Brauman,
    • Emily S. Cassidy,
    • James S. Gerber,
    • Matt Johnston,
    • Nathaniel D. Mueller,
    • Christine O’Connell,
    • Deepak K. Ray,
    • Paul C. West,
    • Jason Hill,
    • Stephen Polasky,
    • John Sheehan &
    • David Tilman

  2. Department of Geography and Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street, West Montreal, Quebec H3A 2K6, Canada

    • Navin Ramankutty

  3. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA

    • Christian Balzer

  4. School of Environment and Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, 111 Lakeshore Road, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Quebec H9X 3V9, Canada

    • Elena M. Bennett

  5. Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, 680 North Park Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

    • Stephen R. Carpenter

  6. Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, 2004 Folwell Avenue, Minnesota 55108, USA

    • Jason Hill

  7. Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO), Arizona State University, 1120 S Cady Mall, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA

    • Chad Monfreda

  8. Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, 1994 Buford Avenue, Minnesota 55108, USA

    • Stephen Polasky

  9. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, SE-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    • Johan Rockström

  10. Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation, University of Bonn, Katzenburgweg 5, D53115, Bonn, Germany

    • Stefan Siebert

  11. Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior, University of Minnesota, 1987 Upper Buford Circle, Minnesota 55108, USA

    • David Tilman

  12. Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), University of Wisconsin, 1710 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53726, USA

    • David P. M. Zaks

Contributions

J.A.F., N.R., K.A.B., E.S.C., J.S.G., M.J., N.D.M., C.O’C., D.K.R. and P.C.W. conducted most of the data production, analysis and shared writing responsibilities. C.B., C.M., S.S. and D.T. contributed data and shared in the scoping and writing responsibilities. E.M.B., S.R.C., J.H., S.P., J.R., J.S. and D.P.M.Z. shared in the scoping and writing responsibilities.

Competing financial interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary information

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  1. Supplementary Information (7.2M)

    The file contains Supplementary Figures 1-7 with legends, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 1 and additional references.

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