Land Quality and Food Security in Asia

F.H. Beinroth, H. Eswaran and P.F. Reich

Published in: Beinroth, F.H., H. Eswaran and P.F. Reich. 2001. Land quality and food security in Asia. In:Bridges, E.M., I.D. Hannam, L.R. Oldeman, F.W.T. Pening de Vries, S.J. Scherr, and S. Sompatpanit (eds.). Responses to Land Degradation. Proc. 2nd. International Conference on Land Degradation and Desertification, Khon Kaen, Thailand. Oxford Press, New Delhi, India.

A land quality and population-carrying capacity based assessment of food security for six management and population scenarios is presented for 24 Asian countries. Two databases were used: the 1:5,000,000FAO/Unesco Soil Map of the World, converted toSoil Taxonomy, and climatic records for about 4,000 stations in Asia. This information and 25 stress factors derived from it were used to group the units of the soil map in one of nine land quality classes. The land area of each class was partitioned for different agricultural and non-agricultural uses. Each land quality class was empirically assigned an optimal population-carrying capacity (persons ha -1) for each of three levels of management inputs. The ratio of (i) the 1995 population and (ii) the 2025 population to the optimal population-carrying capacity was used to group the countries in three risk categories for the three management input levels and two population levels, resulting in six scenarios of food security for each country. Although the assessments inevitably lack precision, they are nevertheless considered an improvement over previous and more intuitive estimates. The analysis shows that, for Asia as a whole, food insecurity is an acute problem. In fact, for some countries the Malthusian prophecy is rapidly becoming a reality. The study also quantified the relative scarcity of prime agricultural land in Asia and the resulting imperative to preserve these areas for food production and optimize the land use of the remaining areas.

The notion of food security is not new. Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, a French philosopher known for his worship of reason noted that France was finite, but the potential number of French infinite. When hunger threatens, he wrote, "new instruments, machines and looms" will continue to appear, and "a very small amount of ground will be able to produce a great quantity of supplies" (Mann, 1993). Thomas Robert Malthus created wide awareness of the problem of food security in his Essay on Population (Malthus, 1798). He proclaimed that "the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". Immediately from the publication of the essay to this day, Malthus became the subject of controversy (Mann, 1993; Greenland et al., 1998).

The concepts of Malthus and Condorcet dominate the two extremes of the debate that endures today. The pessimists, who tend to be biologists and ecologists, have argued for two centuries that an ever-growing population will inevitably bring the apocalypse with poverty, hunger, despair, and social unrest. The optimists, who tend to be economists, argue that human ingenuity and markets will cope with the problem. They base their view on the fact that none of the anticipated catastrophes have so far materialized.

One reason for the divergence of opinion is the scarcity of empirical data that would allow more unequivocal conclusions. By necessity, arguments on both sides of the issue are currently intuitive and speculative rather than based on scientific fact. In an attempt to inject some science into the debate, we provide estimates of population-carrying capacity for Asia that are based on reliable soil and climate data.

Definitions

Land quality

is a measure of the land to perform specific functions. In the context of this study, the function is to sustain grain production and respond to cultural practices conducive to sustainable land management. The principal determinants of land quality are soil performance and resilience.

Food security

has been defined by Swaminathan (1986) as "providing physical and economic access to balanced diets and safe drinking water to all people at all times". He subsequently stated that "a dynamic concept of carrying capacity would imply, in operational terms, the conservation of natural ecosystems as well as their continuous improvement through research, training, technology, community cooperation, and public policies" (Swaminathan, 1991).

Population-carrying capacity

is the perceived ecological ceiling beyond which a habitat cannot support any given species indefinitely. When the maximum sustainable population level is surpassed, the resource base begins to decline (Postel, 1994).

Scope of the Study

The three basic driving sources conducive to the world’s natural resource depletion, and thus implicitly food security, are (i) continuing population growth, (ii) increasing global economic output, and (iii) the widening gap in the distribution of income (Postel, 1994). Consequently, food security is an exceedingly complex and multi-faceted issue. Among the factors that combine to interact to control the problem are, inter alia, natural disasters, war, inadequate policies, poverty, insufficient research and development, lack of infrastructure, trade, land degradation, endowment of natural resources, population growth, and cultural idiosyncrasies. Any of these factors can cause food insecurity as has been discussed in many publications, including those by Anderson (1991), Brown (1997), Postel (1994), and Swaminathan (1994).

We recognize the importance of the factors, but it would be obviously beyond the scope of this paper to discuss them in any detail. We therefore base our analysis on factual soil and climate information and the best available population estimates. Although we consider land degradation to be a major cause of declining agricultural productivity, we felt obliged to ignore it in our study as there is no reliable information available regarding the pace, scale, and geography of land degradation in Asia other than the rather qualitative study by ISRIC (Oldeman et al., 1991). Similarly, we realize that in some areas of the region, for example, northern China and southern India, scarcity of water may be more of a constraint to grain production than land. Again, we excluded this aspect from our study on account of lack of adequate data. Also, we did not consider the possible consequences on food production caused by global climate change.

Methodology

Two databases provided the biophysical basis for our assessment: First, the FAO/Unesco Soil Map of the World at a scale of 1:5,000,000, which is digitally available (FAO, 1991), the units of which were converted to taxa of Soil Taxonomy (Soil Survey Staff, 1998) on the basis of commonality of the criteria that define the taxa in the two systems. Second, a climate database with records for about 4,000 stations in Asia, which allowed to compute the soil moisture and temperature regimes. The pedoclimate map was then superimposed on the soil map. The soil and pedoclimate information was used to place each map unit into one of nine land quality classes with Class I having the most favorable and Class IX the least desirable attributes for grain production. The theoretical matrix for the nine classes, which is based on soil performance and soil resilience, is shown in Table 1. The concepts and characteristics that circumscribe the land quality classes are summarized in Table 2. To facilitate placement into these classes, a list of 25 land stresses that constrain grain production was developed. Table 3 lists these stresses in priority order.

Each soil unit was evaluated relative to 25 stress conditions using the criteria in Table 3 in the fashion of a taxonomic key. Multiple stresses were not considered although it is recognized that these may be the rule rather than the exception.

A country boundary overlay enabled a GIS computation of the area of the recognized land quality classes for each country. The error of such computation is estimated to be about 50 km². Population and arable land area data for 1995 and projections for 2025 were taken from FAO statistics. We then partitioned the land area in each land quality class for various land uses as shown in Table 4. These were the land areas subsequently used in the assessments.

We assigned idealized population-carrying capacities for each land quality class for three levels of management inputs (low, medium, high) as defined by FAO and shown in Table 5.

A final step was to empirically establish levels of vulnerability to food security for each of the 24 countries. We used the ratio of the number of people that can ideally be supported, as computed on the basis of land areas for each land quality class (Table 6) and the assumption shown in Tables 4 and 5, to the 1995 population and the estimated population in 2025 as indices of risk. The thresholds for levels of vulnerability were placed at the following ratios: low risk, <0.8; medium risk, 0.8–2.0; and high risk, >2.0.

Results

Land quality

The respective areas of the nine land quality classes described in Table 2 are listed in Table 6 for each country. The classes were established by using the land stress criteria defined in Table 3. (A detailed but as yet unpublished study by Eswaran et al. [personal communication] provided the kind and extent of the land resource stresses for all Asian countries.) An additional critical consideration was the level of capital investment required to correct these constraints for sustainable grain production. The data in Table 6 are displayed on the map in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Land quality classes of Asia

Table 6 and Figure 1 show that the area of land quality classes varies greatly among and within countries. It is interesting that Class I land only amounts to about 1% of the region’s land. By contrast, nearly half of the land area (49.5%) is occupied by land of Classes VII, VIII, and IX, which is either too cold, too wet, too steep or otherwise unsuited for sustainable grain production. Land in Classes I to III covers about 13% and constitutes the most productive arable land. It is probably correct to assume that, with the exception of a few countries such as Papua New Guinea, this land is for the most part already under cultivation. Land in Classes IV to VI has various constraints whose rectification may require substantial inputs. These lands are also susceptible to degradation. The data clearly show that Asia as a whole is endowed with land resources of predominantly inferior agricultural potential. This situation is aggravated by presumably widespread land degradation. As there are no reliable estimates of land degradation on a country by country basis available, we had to ignore this factor. Rather, our appraisal of land quality represents the inherent quality of land before human interference or natural processes adversely, or favorably, affected it.

Population-carrying capacity

Estimates of the amount of land needed to support one person vary widely. Smil (1987) argued that a minimum of 0.07 ha capita-1 is needed, which translates to 14 persons ha-1. Lal (1989), on the other hand, felt that 0.5 ha of arable land is required per capita, equivalent to 2 persons ha-1. Although Smil’s estimate appears to be unrealistically high, it is now nevertheless used by organizations of the UN as a threshold index.

Most population-carrying appraisals are based on total arable, or total land areas, which commonly leads to erroneous conclusions. We therefore stratified the land resource by land quality and assigned different carrying capacities, as explained in the section on methodology. The results of our study are presented in Table 7 and illustrated in Figure 2 for representative socioeconomic, demographic, and land endowment situations. The data indicate that, with low levels of management inputs, the current population exceeds what may be considered the optimal carrying capacity in all countries of the region except Kampuchea, Laos, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea. With medium and high levels of management, the carrying capacity increases proportionally. With the projected population in 2025, per capita availability of arable land will have declined markedly beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the land resource in all of the region except Kampuchea, Laos, and Papua New Guinea.

Figure 2. Population in 1995 and 2025, and land-based population carrying capacity for three levels of management input for representative countries of Asia.

Food security

Land-based food security in Asia is illustrated in Figure 3 for three levels of management inputs. This figure and the information presented in Table 7 and Figure 2 clearly indicate that Asia’s countries are at various levels of vulnerability to food security. Only three countries—Kampuchea, Laos, Papua New Guinea—are food secure. However, the three largest countries of Asia—China, India, and Indonesia—that account for most of its land area (14,126,040 km²; 66.9%) and population (2,398.14 million; 73.9%) will experience difficulty in adequately feeding their populations unless they employ medium and high levels of agricultural technology. They are nonetheless much better off than countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan (see Figure 2). For these countries, it appears, the Malthusian prophecy has already become a reality.

The current population of Asia is about 3.2 billion and is expected to grow to 4.5 billion by 2025. Our analysis clearly shows that most Asian countries will not be able to feed their projected populations without irreversibly degrading its land resources, even with high levels of management inputs. The reality may, in fact, be worse than our study indicates because, as mentioned above, we only considered inherent land quality, current climate, and estimated population levels. All of these determinants may change over time and aggravate the situation. Moreover, as also mentioned, we disregarded other conditions that may play a decisive role in food security, such as land degradation, patterns of consumerism, and economic development. For example, a large share of Asia’s population is moving up the food chain, eating more pork, poultry, beef, and eggs and drinking more beer, all of which are grain-intensive products (Brown, 1997). Thus, Hazell (1998) estimates that in China cereal requirements for animal feed will increase more than twofold from about 73 million metric tons in 1993 to 178 million metric tons in 2020. This grain will obviously not be available for direct human consumption. These and other speculative circumstances not taken into account may combine to affect food security and thus introduce a margin of error in our assessment.

Figure 3. Food security in Asia

Conclusions

The overall prospects for food security in Asia are not encouraging. Only a few countries will be able to feed their growing populations without increasing land management input levels markedly. Most countries of the region lack the capital resources to make the financial investments required to increase land productivity. Nevertheless, the three largest and most populous countries of Asia—China, India, and Indonesia—should be able to meet minimal food requirements, provided the level of management technology is increased. It appears unlikely, however, that countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan will be able to produce sufficient food now or in the future. Although the same is true for industrialized countries like Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, they can rely on non-agricultural industry, commerce, and servicing functions to earn the money to import food.

There are several adverse aspects precipitated by the current and future situation of local and global environmental consequence. First, farmers in the poorer countries will be forced to eke out a living by exploiting fragile land resources, which often results in irreversible degradation and permanent loss of biodiversity. Second, our analysis revealed the relative scarcity of prime agricultural land in Asia and the resulting imperative to preserve these areas for food production and optimize the land use of the remaining areas. This implies that soil scientists must expand their horizons and explore all functions of the soil and land resource in support of food security and quality of life. Third, although there is nothing inherently wrong with importing food from elsewhere, this leads to the appropriation of natural resources in other countries, which may not be a sustainable procedure.

We believe that to confront the problem of food security in Asia, massive infusions of capital are needed to support, inter alia:

1. agricultural research and development, particularly in biotechnology and other cutting edge technologies,
   
   
2. the development of policies and practices conducive to sustainable land management,
   
   
3. the development of indices of land quality and their monitoring, and
   
   
4. elaboration of early warning indicators of land degradation.

The establishment of an International Convention on Land Degradation with the mandate and funding to halt or reverse the deterioration of the global land resource would be a commendable first step to address these issues.

References

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