Simple conceptual overview how peculiarities of food production and food supply chain affect land degradation.

Simple conceptual overview how peculiarities of food production and food supply chain affect land degradation.

Most of the land suitable for agriculture is located in the temperate zone, while the yields of comparable crops in tropical countries (countries of the global south) are almost half compared to developed countries in the temperate zone. In addition to greater soil fertility, the more advanced technological base of economically developed countries. Developed counties the increase their production mainly through its intensification, i.e. greater production on the same area and greater meat, milk or egg production per one livestock specimen. This leads to the concentration of production in suitable conditions, the homogenization of the landscape, reduction of grazing and other extensive form of land use and other negative effects of agricultural intensification on ecosystems. On the other hand, in the countries of the global south, agricultural production is increasing mainly through increasing the production areas, which results in endangering the remnants of the original ecosystems. Number of farmers is decreasing yet they feed larger amount of food consumers. This increasing the efficiency of human work is connected with the transfer of part of the work to the work of animals and later machines which allow one farmer to cultivate larger area of land, and further to the intensification of agricultural production, the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and other substances, so-called additional energy is needed to obtain them. As the intensity of agriculture and the ability of one farmer to feed more people increases, the total amount of energy required to achieve production also increases, not only because total output increases, but also because the amount of additional energy required per unit of output increases. As the amount of additional energy increase recycling of biomass (and energy) inside agriculture system decrease. Along with this, the negative impacts of agricultural production on ecosystems are increasing. These negative impacts are usually greater in the less fertile soils of the global south than in the more fertile soils of developed countries.  Pressure of consumers increase not only due to population increase, but also due to detachment of people from food production, which cause that consumers perceive food mainly by its cost. Food supply chain become driven by retailers, which increase pressure on price, and thus pressure on farmers to optimize production cost often on expense of more intensive soil and land use which may lead to land degradation. Many retailers now use environmental standards which are well suited to control for extensification (such as zero deforestation) but tackling of agriculture intensification is rare.