An FAO report warns that expanding farmland is no longer viable to meet future food demands.
Agriculture already using 72% of global freshwater and accounts for over 60% of degraded land.
Smarter, resource-efficient practices, resilient crops and integrated systems are needed to feed 10.3 billion people by 2085.
Agriculture must produce about 50 per cent more food, feed and fibre by 2050 compared with what was produced in 2012, to feed the growing population. But meeting this demand will add significant pressure to already strained natural resources, especially water, land, and soil, a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, warned.
Between 1964 and 2023, global agricultural production tripled but the vast majority of these gains were achieved by intensifying how existing land was used — through higher-yielding crops, expansion in irrigation and improved technologies — rather than by expanding the amount of land under cultivation, the latest edition of The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW 2025) report pointed out.
World’s total irrigated land area, for instance, more than doubled during this period and by 2023, 23 per cent of all croplands were equipped for irrigation. In contrast, farmland area grew by only 8 per cent over those six decades, underscoring the mounting pressure on the same limited areas of land to deliver ever-greater levels of food, feed and fibre.
Expanding agricultural area is no longer viable, the report stressed. Overall, agriculture accounted for 72 per cent of global freshwater withdrawals, a figure predicted to rise further in the future and contributing to increasing water scarcity. This happens by overexploitation of groundwater and seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers.
“Of all the economic sectors, agriculture, covering a third of the world’s land (4.8 billion hectares), has by far the greatest impact on land resources. The situation is similar for water resources, with agriculture accounting for 72 per cent of global water withdrawal,” the researchers wrote in the report released December 1.
Over 1.6 billion hectares of land, corresponding to more than 10 per cent of Earth’s area, have been degraded due to poor land-use management. More than 60 per cent of this degradation occurs on agricultural land, pushing global food systems to the brink, it said.
And in an increasingly vicious cycle, the intense pressure on land, soil and water resources was now undermining the very foundation of agriculture. Degraded soils, declining water availability and the loss of productive land were reducing the sector’s ability to meet current needs, let alone future demands.
At the same time, agricultural expansion continued to drive deforestation and remained a major contributor to the destruction of carbon-rich ecosystems such as peatlands, further accelerating land degradation and weakening the resilience of agrifood systems.
Under the theme ‘potential to produce more and better’, the report highlighted the significant, and often overlooked, potential of land and water resources to support sustainable increases in food production. It presented strategies for producing more and better food for a growing population, while ensuring the responsible and resilient management of land, soil and water. It indicated that the world has the potential to feed up to 10.3 billion people by 2085, when the global population was expected to peak.
But future productivity gains must come from smarter, and not simply more, production. “This means closing yield gaps (the difference between currently obtained and potentially attainable yield); diversifying into resilient crop varieties; and adopting locally-tailored, resource-efficient practices suited to specific land, soil, and water conditions,” it said. It highlighted integrated systems such as agroforestry, rotational grazing and forage improvement, as well as rice-fish farming.