skip to main content
Language:
Search Limited to: Search Limited to: Resource type Show Results with: Show Results with: Search type Index

Past and present biophysical redundancy of countries as a buffer to changes in food supply

Environmental research letters, 2016-05, Vol.11 (5), p.55008 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

2016 IOP Publishing Ltd ;2016. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. ;Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ;ISSN: 1748-9326 ;EISSN: 1748-9326 ;DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/5/055008 ;CODEN: ERLNAL

Full text available

Citations Cited by
  • Title:
    Past and present biophysical redundancy of countries as a buffer to changes in food supply
  • Author: Fader, Marianela ; Rulli, Maria Cristina ; Carr, Joel ; Dell'Angelo, Jampel ; D'Odorico, Paolo ; Gephart, Jessica A ; Kummu, Matti ; Magliocca, Nicholas ; Porkka, Miina ; Prell, Christina ; Puma, Michael J ; Ratajczak, Zak ; Seekell, David A ; Suweis, Samir ; Tavoni, Alessandro
  • Subjects: Agricultural economics ; Agricultural production ; Biodiversity and Ecology ; Climate change ; Economic development ; Environmental Sciences ; Food ; Food availability ; Food production ; Food supply ; Human influences ; Population growth ; productivity ; Redundancy ; resilience ; spare land ; Supply & demand ; Urbanization ; water ; Water resources ; yield gap
  • Is Part Of: Environmental research letters, 2016-05, Vol.11 (5), p.55008
  • Description: Spatially diverse trends in population growth, climate change, industrialization, urbanization and economic development are expected to change future food supply and demand. These changes may affect the suitability of land for food production, implying elevated risks especially for resource-constrained, food-importing countries. We present the evolution of biophysical redundancy for agricultural production at country level, from 1992 to 2012. Biophysical redundancy, defined as unused biotic and abiotic environmental resources, is represented by the potential food production of 'spare land', available water resources (i.e., not already used for human activities), as well as production increases through yield gap closure on cultivated areas and potential agricultural areas. In 2012, the biophysical redundancy of 75 (48) countries, mainly in North Africa, Western Europe, the Middle East and Asia, was insufficient to produce the caloric nutritional needs for at least 50% (25%) of their population during a year. Biophysical redundancy has decreased in the last two decades in 102 out of 155 countries, 11 of these went from high to limited redundancy, and nine of these from limited to very low redundancy. Although the variability of the drivers of change across different countries is high, improvements in yield and population growth have a clear impact on the decreases of redundancy towards the very low redundancy category. We took a more detailed look at countries classified as 'Low Income Economies (LIEs)' since they are particularly vulnerable to domestic or external food supply changes, due to their limited capacity to offset for food supply decreases with higher purchasing power on the international market. Currently, nine LIEs have limited or very low biophysical redundancy. Many of these showed a decrease in redundancy over the last two decades, which is not always linked with improvements in per capita food availability.
  • Publisher: Bristol: IOP Publishing
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 1748-9326
    EISSN: 1748-9326
    DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/5/055008
    CODEN: ERLNAL
  • Source: Open Access: IOP Publishing Free Content
    Geneva Foundation Free Medical Journals at publisher websites
    IOPscience (Open Access)
    SWEPUB Freely available online
    ROAD: Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources
    ProQuest Central
    DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
Back to results list
INSPIRE LIBRARY - TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY (84-028) 37 755 057 Feedback
19 Nguyen Huu Tho St. Dist.7, HCM thuvien@tdtu.edu.vn

Copyright © 2017 INSPIRE LIBRARY - TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY

Searching Remote Databases, Please Wait