Yields vs. Land Use: Feeding a Growing Population

Over the last 50 years global population has more than doubled. This factor has inevitably reduced the land available per person to live and grow food. How have we managed to feed a rapidly growing population with ever-shrinking land resources?

There are two key variables we can change to produce more food crops. We can opt for:

• Expansion: increase the area of land we grow our food over
• Intensification: increase the yield output (i.e. kilograms of crop produced per unit area of land). This is typically achieved through a combination of chemical inputs (such as fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides); improved water use (e.g. irrigation); mechanization and improved farming practices; and the use of higher-yielding crop strains or seeds