Climate change and agricultural ecosystem management in dry areas

The world population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 and food production to support this population needs to increase by at least 60% while maintaining the natural resource base and the environment (World Bank 2008). The decrease in productive arable land from urbanisation, the reduction in irrigable land due to water scarcity and groundwater salinisation, competition for use of crops for biofuels, and increasing cost of inputs (e.g. fertilizers, fuel, pesticides and herbicides) suggest that agriculture needs to be much more efficient in its use of land, water and energy in order to meet the food security requirements of the rising world population. This is true without the complicating factor of climate change. According to the World Development Report (World Bank 2010), food production will be required to increase by 1.8% per annum between 2005 and 2050 rather than 1% per annum if there were no impact of climate change. This puts tremendous pressure on dryland agriculture to increase the efficiency of use of precipitation and nutrients.