A lot of agricultural lands have been turned into buildings, factories and other kinds of physical structures. Don't you think this will contribute on the deterioration of agriculture?
No if in the buildings, factories and other kinds of physical structures ,uses a urban agriculture
Yes it is true that land is being lost. That is a part of the Development process. But I do not think it will lead to deterioration in Agriculture.
Conversion of agricultural lands for other purposes is happening at an alarming rate. It is estimated that the total area of earth’s land surface is 13 billion ha. Out of this, forests occupy 32 percent; grasslands 27 percent; and urban settlements 9 percent. Deserts, snow covered lands, and wetlands occupy another 21 percent, which cannot be used for agriculture or forests. What remains is just 11 percent or 1.43 billion ha, which is fit for arable farming (Pimental and Pimental, 2008).
Considering the constraints on land, de Vries (2001) concluded that a person requires 0.05 to 0.5 ha land for the production of his/her food depending upon the intensity of farming. However, the per capita availability of agricultural land decreased from 0.5 ha in 1960 to 0.21 ha in 2011. Urban encroachment on agricultural land also increases the pressure on remaining lands. Each person requires land for housing, transpiration, industry, commerce, leisure, education and religious needs. It is estimated that the per capita requirement of land for this needs is 0.025ha (Young, 1998). On this account, annual loss of 0.1 percent agricultural land is predicted. Agricultural land can become degraded completely and irreversibly by various other processes too including soil erosion, nutrient mining, salinization, and pollution. A global average of 0.5 percent loss of agricultural land per year is estimated.
References
de Vries, P. 2001. Food security? We are losing ground fast. In: Nosberger, J. Geiger, H.H. and Struit, P.C. (eds.), Crop Science: Progress and Prospects. CABI Publishing, Oxon, pp.1-14.
Pimental, D. and Pimental, M. 2008. Human population growth. In: Jorgensen, S.E (editor-in- chief), Encyclopedia of Ecology, pp.1907-1912.
Young, A. 1998. Land Resources Now and for the Future. Cambridge University Press, London, 332p.
Yes, very much true. Main factors include population explosion and industrialization.
Yes it's true, the harmony between density cement buiding and natural land are best solution
Best solution to this problem is population control. And this question has generated one more question in my mind.
How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population?
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