Expanding Cities Have Helped Cut Acreage Per Person Used for Food

Expanding cities around the world have helped shrink the acreage used per person for food production by 30% since 1950, a report by a Washington study group said.

The Worldwatch Institute said the land used for grain production has fallen to 0.30 acres per person last year from 0.57 acres in 1950.

The 1995 figure was equivalent to about a quarter of a football field or a sixth of a soccer pitch, the institute said in a report titled Shrinking Fields.

Because many cities started on good farmland, the spread of roads, buildings and industrial parks inevitably eats up some of the most productive remaining land, the report said.

“At least 5% of China’s cropland was lost in only six years (1986-1992), in part to urban expansion and industrialization,” said Gary Gardner, the author of the report.

Increasing affluence in the Third World, leading to higher demand for meat and dairy products, has driven a boom in the world’s need for grains. Coupled with poor crops, this has led to world grain reserves falling to 48 days of usage.

“If we fail to halt heavy losses of cropland, it is unlikely that we will be able to feed a world population that will increase by more than 400 million people in just five years,” Worldwatch said.

Gardner said that, by allowing increasing urbanization, governments were gambling on indefinite increases in grain yields.

Dennis Avery, an agricultural analyst at the Hudson Institute, criticized the report. Improving technology would continue to boost yields faster than population growth at least until the population peaked at around 9 billion in 2040, he said.

Cities cover only 1.4% of the world’s surface now, growing to 3.5% in 2040, an insignificant amount when compared with arable land, which covers a third of the globe, Avery said.