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Past and Present Biophysical Redundancy of Countries as a Buffer to Changes in Food SupplySpatially 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.


Document ID
20160007358
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Fader, Marianela
(Avignon Univ. France)
Rulli, Maria Cristina
(Politecnico di Milano Milan, Italy)
Carr, Joel
(Virginia Univ. Charlottesville, VA, United States)
Dell' Angelo, Jampel
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
D' Odorico, Paolo
(Virginia Univ. Charlottesville, VA, United States)
Gephart, Jessica A.
(Virginia Univ. Charlottesville, VA, United States)
Kummu, Matti
(Aalto Univ Aalto, Finland)
Magliocca, Nicholas
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
Porkka, Miina
(Aalto Univ Aalto, Finland)
Prell, Christina
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
Puma, Michael J.
(Columbia Univ. New York, NY, United States)
Date Acquired
June 8, 2016
Publication Date
May 17, 2016
Publication Information
Publication: Environmental Research Letters
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Volume: 11
Issue: 5
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN32452
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNX14AB99A
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF DGE-00809128
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNX08AJ75A
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
biophysics
populations
redundancy
agriculture

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