Often, small-scale farmers settle the areas along logging roads in order to burn secondary or cleared forest for crop production. These farmers are eventually pushed or bought-out by large-scale cattle ranchers or soy prodcution owners.

The figure shows change in cereals production under three different GCM equilibrium scenarios (percent from base estimated in 2060). While there are still uncertainties about whether climate change will cause global agricultural production to increase or decrease, changes in the aggregate level of production are expected to be small or moderate. The result of the studies that have been conducted so far vary depending on such variables as the trad...

Women are responsible for most household work (and in many parts of the world the majority of agricultural production), but women’s rights to own land or control resources are constrained, often by traditional customs and religious laws.

A central component in preventing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, such as provisioning of water, from expanding agricultural production is to limit the trade-off between economic growth and biodiversity by stimulating agricultural productivity and more efficient land use. Further enhancement of agricultural productivity (‘closing the yield gap’) is the key factor in reducing the need for land and, consequently, the rate of bio...

The demise of the Aral Sea in central Asia was caused primarily by the diversion of the inflowing Amu Dar’ya and Syr Dar’ya rivers to provide irrigation water for local croplands. These diversions dramatically reduced the river inflows, causing the Aral Sea to shrink by more than 50%, to lose two-thirds of its volume, and to greatly increase its salinity. At the current rate of decline, the Aral Sea has the potential to disappear completely by 20...