A global clustering of terrestrial food production systems

Journal article

Food production is at the heart of global sustainability challenges, with unsustainable practices being a major driver of biodiversity loss, emissions and land degradation. The concept of foodscapes, defined as the characteristics of food production along biophysical and socio-economic gradients, could be a way addressing those challenges. By identifying homologues foodscapes classes possible interventions and leverage points for more sustainable agriculture could be identified. Here we provide a globally consistent approximation of the world’s foodscape classes. We integrate global data on biophysical and socio-economic factors to identify a minimum set of emergent clusters and evaluate their characteristics, vulnerabilities and risks with regards to global change factors. Overall, we find food production globally to be highly concentrated in a few areas. Worryingly, we find particularly intensively cultivated or irrigated foodscape classes to be under considerable climatic and degradation risks. Our work can serve as baseline for global-scale zoning and gap analyses, while also revealing homologous areas for possible agricultural interventions

Authors: Jung, M; Boucher, TM; Wood, SA; Folberth, C; Wironen, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 2
• Pages: e0296846-e0296846
• Publication date: 2024-02-14
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296846
• EISSN: 1932-6203
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• Language: English
• Keywords: Biology; Ecology; Agricultural productivity; Natural resource economics; Geography; Production (economics); Sustainability; Food security; Agriculture; Business; Computer science; Zoning; Leverage (statistics); Psychological intervention; Biodiversity; Food processing; Environmental resource management; Environmental science; Political science; Land degradation; Economics