Source
doi:10.4060/cd7067en — original publication (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Summary
FAO’s State of the Food and Agriculture 2025 (SOFA 2025), subtitled Addressing land degradation across landholding scales, is the flagship annual report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. This edition assembles new global evidence on land degradation, on the distribution of the world’s farms by size, and on the policy options for sustainable land use. Its core messages are that land is a finite, non-substitutable resource underpinning food security and livelihoods; that land degradation is now a pervasive and “silent” global challenge affecting countries of all income levels, with roughly 1.7 billion people living in areas of degradation-induced yield loss; and that responses must be scale-sensitive, because the world’s roughly 570 million farms range from the 85 percent that are smaller than 2 hectares (operating only 9 percent of farmland) to the 0.1 percent over 1 000 hectares that control nearly half of it. For the thesis it is an authoritative, current backdrop that (a) quantifies the global land pressures which make community-scale self-sufficiency salient, (b) supplies the “landholding scales” lens directly relevant to community-scale land use and the constraints small and medium landholders face (tenure, credit, inputs, markets), and (c) demonstrates that land degradation is “neither inevitable nor irreversible”, endorsing regenerative, tenure-secured, differentiated land management.
Key thesis insights
- Land degradation is a pervasive, silent, and reversible global challenge. Around 1.7 billion people live in areas experiencing sizeable degradation-induced crop yield losses, with middle-income countries most affected (nearly 1 billion people); in high-income countries intensive input use “masks” degradation while increasing environmental harm (Core Messages 1 and 3, p. xiv; Executive Summary p. xvi). Yet the report frames this as an opportunity: reversing just 10 percent of human-induced degradation on current croplands could restore production sufficient to feed an additional 154 million people annually, and restoring abandoned croplands (approximately 3.6 Mha are abandoned each year) could feed between 292 and 476 million more; “land degradation is neither inevitable nor irreversible” (Core Message 12, p. xiv; Executive Summary pp. xv–xvi). This is the authoritative backdrop that makes sustainable, self-sufficient community land management salient and frames it as recoverable value, not only loss. OT_198
- The “landholding scales” lens and the scale-sensitivity imperative. Of the world’s roughly 570 million farms, 85 percent are smaller than 2 hectares and cultivate just 9 percent of farmland, while the 0.1 percent of farms over 1 000 hectares control nearly 50 percent; medium-sized farms (2–50 ha) manage about half of all agricultural land in Africa and Asia (Core Message 4, p. xiv; Executive Summary p. xvii). FAO’s central argument is that “the vast diversity in farm size underscores the need for scale-sensitive approaches to land degradation, food security and sustainability” (Core Message 5, p. xiv). For the thesis, a self-sufficient community sits at the small-to-medium end of this spectrum, sharing smallholders’ constraints (limited access to land, credit, inputs, technology and markets) and, crucially, their opportunities. OT_198
- Smallholders make an outsized contribution under constraint. Despite persistent constraints, the world’s roughly 500 million smallholders contribute approximately 16 percent of global dietary energy, 12 percent of proteins and 9 percent of fats derived from crops; farms smaller than 5 hectares produce almost 50 percent of global stimulants, spices and aromatic crops and between 20 and 30 percent of cereals, fruits and vegetables (Executive Summary p. xvii). In low- and lower-middle-income countries smallholders account for about 60 percent of crop kilocalories (Core Message 8, p. xiv). This is authoritative evidence that small-scale, diversified, high-value production is materially significant, underpinning a community-scale food self-sufficiency argument. OT_198
- Secure land tenure is a fundamental enabler of sustainable land management. Secure and enforceable land tenure, “for both individuals and communities”, is identified as foundational: secure rights reduce uncertainty and encourage long-term investment in soil conservation and productivity, and unlock credit, insurance and extension services. FAO cautions, however, that enabling environments alone are not sufficient, and that gender inequalities persist, with women in 43 of 49 countries with available data less likely than men to own or hold secure rights to agricultural land (Foreword pp. v–vi; Executive Summary pp. xvii–xviii). This directly informs the thesis’s treatment of community land-tenure and governance models. OT_198
- Future gains should come from closing yield gaps and a mixed policy toolkit, not from expansion. Agricultural expansion remains the primary driver of global deforestation (accounting for nearly 90 percent of forest loss), yet improved crop technologies actually reduced global cropland by 16 Mha between 1961 and 2015, so additional production should come from closing yield gaps and improved management rather than converting fragile ecosystems (Executive Summary pp. xv–xvii). FAO groups policy instruments into three broad types, regulatory, incentive-based and cross-compliance: regulatory measures “consistently improve land conditions across all land cover types”, agri-environmental payments are particularly effective on forest lands and croplands but require funding, and a combination of both “generates the greatest potential to align private incentives with public benefits” (Core Messages 10 and 11, p. xiv). This supports the thesis’s case for intensive, regenerative community production and a blended policy-and-incentive environment. OT_198
Research targets
None opened and none resolved. This is a proactively-retrieved authoritative backdrop source for the thesis; it corroborates and enriches the project’s existing land-use, food-systems and self-sufficiency framing (and sits alongside its companion FAO 2025 flagship, SOLAW 2025) rather than filling a specific backlog gap.
Notes
- Open access, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0); downloaded directly from FAO (
https://doi.org/10.4060/cd7067en), so it is an authoritative primary download. Print ISSN 0081-4539; online ISSN 1564-3352. - Reading scope. Read verbatim: Foreword (pp. v–vi), Core Messages (p. xiv) and Executive Summary (pp. xv–xix). The four body chapters (Chapter 1 “Land at the crossroads of global challenges”, Chapter 2 “Land degradation as a challenge to productivity”, Chapter 3 “Global landscape of farms and food production”, Chapter 4 “Policy options for sustainable land use”; 148 pp total) were not read; every figure quoted above sits in those front-matter sections.
- Scope. Global assessment. No NZ-specific data and nothing that feeds an NI calculation cell.
data_quality: high(authoritative FAO flagship, single-source; notverified, which the project reserves for figures corroborated by an independent source). - Companion source. Its companion is OT_197 (FAO SOLAW 2025, land and water resources); the two FAO 2025 flagships are complementary global backdrops — SOFA = land degradation across landholding scales, SOLAW = land and water resources.
- The report offers a rich further-reading seam if the thesis needs it (e.g. the causal degradation–yield-gap estimation, the inverse farm-size–productivity relationship, soil-organic-carbon “debt” by farm size, and the China Loess Plateau / Great Green Wall restoration case boxes).
Connections
Links to
Sources (1): OT_197
Referenced by
Sources (1): OT_197