Soil Fertility - Chap 01

If all resources are harnessed, and adequate measures taken to minimize soil degradation, sufficient food to feed the population in 2020 can be produced, and probably sufficient for a few billion more. These were the key conclusions from a Discussion Meeting held at the Royal Society in London in December 1996. The meeting entitled ‘Land resources: on the edge of the Malthusian precipice?’ attempted to make a rigorous scientific assessment of the evidence regarding the availability of land resources to meet future demands, and to determine what further research is needed to strengthen the scientific base on which such assessments depend (Greenland et al., 1997). At the meeting global data-sets and models were widely used by specialists with expertise in the area of population growth, crop production, climatology, water, soil and land resources, or the environment. Some of the key points to emerge from the meeting were: 1