A global clustering of terrestrial food production systems

Jung, M., Boucher, T.M., Wood, S.A., Folberth, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6738-5238, Wironen, M., Thornton, P., Bossio, D., & Obersteiner, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6981-2769 (2024). A global clustering of terrestrial food production systems. PLoS ONE 19 (2) e0296846. 10.1371/journal.pone.0296846.

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Abstract

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.

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