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 t is appalling that 840 million people worldwide go to bed hungry, and a further two billion suffer from malnutrition. Unchecked population growth will drive these numbers even higher at a time when shortage of natural resources for food production is becoming more and more serious.
A minimum of 0.7 hectares of good land is needed to meet the annual food needs of one person, but even this minimum requirement is whittling away. Over four billion people are projected to be facing land scarcity by 2050, and those in the dry areas are likely to be hit more severely than anywhere else.
Since much of the arable land has already been brought under cultivation, it falls on every one of us to make the best use of the land that is available; to increase the level of production per hectare; and to correct past mistakes in land management.
The harsh and climatically challenging environments in dry areas, coupled with demographic pressures, make agriculture a difficult enterprise. These factors are leading to increased natural resource degradation. Very often it is human intervention and neglect that is accelerating this degradation with serious consequences for both present and future generations. For example, in Yemen, this degradation is evident in the deterioration of many of the mountain terraces which account for about 25% of the country's arable land. Walls have been allowed to fall into disrepair and collapse, permitting soil erosion, and limiting the ability of the terraces to harness moisture for crops or fruit trees. As a result many people have lost their employment, and the remaining land has come under tremendous pressure, given the steadily increasing size of the average Yemeni family. Yemeni colleagues, in collaboration with ICARDA, are finding ways to put the terrace farming back on track, to increase food production as well as save good land from being lost for ever.
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