Farming and the geography of nutrient production for human use: a transdisciplinary analysis

作者：Mario Herrero, Philip K. Thornton, Brendan Power, Jessica Bogard, Roseline Remans, Steffen Fritz, James Gerber, Gerald C. Nelson, Linda See, Katharina Waha, Reg Watson, Paul West, Leah Samberg, Jeannette van de Steeg, Eloise Stephenson, Mark T. van Wijk, Peter Havlík · 发表于：The Lancet Planetary Health · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.1016/s2542-5196(17)30007-4 · 被引用次数：455 · 研究领域：Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact、Urban Agriculture and Sustainability、Nutrition, Health, and Society Studies

Background Information about the global structure of agriculture and nutrient production and its diversity is essential to improve present understanding of national food production patterns, agricultural livelihoods, and food chains, and their linkages to land use and their associated ecosystems services. Here we provide a plausible breakdown of global agricultural and nutrient production by farm size, and also study the associations between farm size, agricultural diversity, and nutrient production. This analysis is crucial to design interventions that might be appropriately targeted to promote healthy diets and ecosystems in the face of population growth, urbanisation, and climate change. Methods We used existing spatially-explicit global datasets to estimate the production levels of 41 major crops, seven livestock, and 14 aquaculture and fish products. From overall production estimates, we estimated the production of vitamin A, vitamin B 12 , folate, iron, zinc, calcium, calories, and protein. We also estimated the relative contribution of farms of different sizes to the production of different agricultural commodities and associated nutrients, as well as how the diversity of food production based on the number of different products grown per geographic pixel and distribution of products within this pixel (Shannon diversity index [ H ]) changes with different farm sizes. Findings Globally, small and medium farms (≤50 ha) produce 51–77% of nearly all commodities and nutrien...