Biofuels, Food, Population Growth to Put Increasing Pressure on Forests

Photo of land cleared for cattle in the Amazon by Leonardo F. Freitas

A new report from the Rights and Resources Initiative starkly quantifies the amount of additional land which will have to be put under cultivation to satisfy the demands of a growing world population for food and biofuels.

Land equivalent to 12 Germanys will have to go under the plow
Unless agricultural productivity of land rise sharply—the exact opposite of trends since the Green Revolution and the subsequent introduction of GM crops—an additional 515 million hecta...