Increasing food production at the expense of tropical forests |
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Authors: | Bo R Döös |
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Institution: | (1) Global Environmental Management, Jordangasse 7/13, A-1010 Vienna, Austria |
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Abstract: | An attempt is made to estimate to what extent it is possible to increase food production by conversion of forest land to agricultural
land. To accomplish this two different approaches have been explored. The first one represents the possibility of developing
a comprehensive model capable of taking into account the various processes influencing the food production. It is judged that
this approach cannot provide a realistic result due to insufficient knowledge of the processes involved, and lack of reliable
data. Instead a simple, heuristic method has been applied. The main sources of information used include data representing
the soil of the deforested land, the decline of the productivity of the land gained, and the length of time it can be used
for agricultural production. Although this method also has its obvious limitations, there are reasons to believe it permits
certain conclusions can be safely drawn: (a) even if each year the area of agricultural land is increased by a given amount
through removal of forest, there will be no gain of the agricultural production after a few years; and (b) to achieve a constant
annual increase of the food production will require that each year the area of forest removal is increased.
This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
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Keywords: | deforestation food production environmental degradation |
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