Land degradation and desertification contribute to food insecurity by reducing the productivity of croplands and pasture. Addressing land degradation through sustainable land management practices such as crop rotation and soil fertility management can improve food security by increasing food production. However, fully solving food insecurity requires addressing both supply-side issues like land degradation as well as demand-side issues like reducing post-harvest food waste and unequal food consumption. Integrated solutions that blend supply-side and demand-side approaches across multiple stakeholders are needed.

1. Combating land degradation and
desertification and enhancing food
security: towards integrated solutions
Lindsay C. STRINGER, Mariam AKHTAR-SCHUSTER,
Maria Jose MARQUES, Farshad AMIRASLANI, Simone
QUATRINI, Elena M. ABRAHAM
Paper in press in Annals of Arid Zone
DesertNet International
www.desertnet-international.org
Food Security in Drylands Working Group
Chair: Lindsay C. Stringer
Email: l.stringer@leeds.ac.uk Twitter: @LindsayStringer

2. The food security challenge
• 1.56 billion ha land used to produce crops (12% Earth’s land surface)
•3.4 billion ha devoted to livestock production (25% Earth’s land surface)
(Bruinsma, 2009)
• Approximately one billion people are undernourished (GDPRD, 2012)
• Population growth, land degradation, biodiversity loss and a decline in
water quality and availability create further pressure
• How do land degradation and desertification contribute to
food insecurity?
• Can activities to address land degradation and
desertification improve food security?

3. Supply-side issues
• Biocapacity constraints: e.g. limitations to outputs - plateauing of
crop yields, finite amount of minerals, fossil fuels etc to maintain
productivity
• Production constraints: e.g. soil nutrient losses, chemical pollution,
aquifer depletion, drought, inability to meet food quality, safety or
health requirements
• Distribution constraints: e.g. protectionist policies, export oriented
production, market deficiencies, poor infrastructure (e.g. limited
transport and lack of storage capacity) .
Demand side issues
• Budget limitations: e.g. Lack or loss of purchasing power
• Competition in appropriation of food supplies
• Changes in per capita consumption patterns as people’s diets
change over time

4. Drivers of food insecurity and land degradation
• Environmental – including land use and land cover change;
soils and topographic limitations; climate, climate variability and
climate change e.g. affecting water availability
• Political – policy and institutional factors e.g.land tenure
• Economic – markets, prices and large-scale land acquisitions
• Social – including population and demographic change; excess
consumption and post-harvest waste; access to knowledge and
technologies
Land degradation and food security and their drivers
are closely interlinked. This suggests that efforts to
improve food security can also address land
degradation and vice versa – at least in part.

5. Solutions
Three key ‘supply side’ solutions and one ‘demand side’ solution
1) Increase the area of cropland dedicated to growing food crops
2) Increase crop productivity or intensity of current land used for food production
3) Increase storage capacities to provide buffers
4) Decreasing waste offers a demand-side solution
How can Sustainable Land Management support supply side solutions?
Several examples of successful practices such as crop rotation, fallowing,
soil fertility and organic matter management, reduction of tillage, crop
residue and mulch management, water harvesting etc  these
management strategies improve land quality and enhance food security
due to increased production (Sanchez and Swaminathan, 2005)

6. Successful SLM options in the literature and in WOCAT:
World Overview of Conservation Approaches and
Technologies which tackle supply side issues
• WOCAT - Electronic, largely open-access platform that captures SLM
technologies used by land mangers (Schwilch et al., 2011)
• Would be usefully complemented with a similar system to catalogue
knowledge on traditional food securing mechanisms and options for
food storage and waste minimisation
Example from literature Reference
Improvement or restoration of soil productivity possible Wezel and Rath (2002)
in Sahel agricultural areas by controlling erosion,
restoring native vegetation cover and use of manure
from livestock
Yield increases of 50 to100% for rain-fed crops after Pretty and Hine (2001)
adoption of SLM in Africa and Latin America
Compost applications increase yields to a similar Araya and Edwards
magnitude to chemical fertilisers in Ethiopia (2006)

7. Example: tackling excess consumption and reducing
losses: demand side challenges
• Global production and consumption very unevenly distributed
• Lowest calorific intake in Ethiopia, Haiti, Angola, Eritrea
(<2000kcal/person/day)
• USA, Israel, many European countries consume >3200
kcal/person/day
• Both highest and lowest consuming countries have significant
dryland areas
• >40% of food losses occur at post-harvest and processing stages
• 40% of losses in developed countries occur at retail and
consumer levels (FAO, 2011)
• Total food waste by consumers in industrialised countries
(222 million tons per annum) is almost equal to the entire food
production in sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons per annum)
• Solutions: improved processing, storage and education

8. A way forward
• Socio-politically and socio-economically relevant solutions are needed
• Demand and supply-side solutions should be blended to address different
facets of the problem (multi-stakeholder involvement)
• Transdisciplinary approaches are required, crossing all relevant domains
• An equitable distribution of burden is needed based on a thorough
understanding of direct and indirect costs, benefits and externalities
(incentives)
• Solutions should be institutionalised - recognised and enforced by law
• Solutions should be consistent and coherent across all countries, sectors
and actors
• Solutions must be financially sustainable and not exclusively dependent on
public subsidies
• Solutions must be scalable

9. Conclusion
∗ Addressing land degradation can ease food insecurity but will
not completely solve it in the presence of underlying causes
and demand side issues
Thank you for listening
l.stringer@leeds.ac.uk
@LindsayStringer

10. Conclusion
∗ Addressing land degradation can ease food insecurity but will
not completely solve it in the presence of underlying causes
and demand side issues
Thank you for listening
l.stringer@leeds.ac.uk
@LindsayStringer