FAO State of Food and Agriculture 2025: Global Land Degradation and Farm Scale Dynamics
SDG 15: Life on Land | SDG 2: Zero Hunger | SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
Institutions: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change | Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) flagship report, The State of Food and Agriculture 2025 (SOFA 2025), focuses on the urgent global challenge of Land Degradation, which is eroding productivity and compromising ecosystem resilience in countries regardless of income level. Approximately 1.7 billion people worldwide live in areas experiencing yield losses linked to human-induced land degradation, making it a growing threat to food security.
Quantifying Degradation: The “Debt” Metric
The regions of Southern Asia and Eastern Asia contain the largest affected populations, reflecting high population densities and accumulated long-term damage measured through the Land Degradation Debt metric. This debt is a quantitative assessment representing the total human-induced deterioration of land accumulated over time , specifically differentiating anthropogenic impact from natural processes.
India’s Vulnerability and Farm Structure
The report highlights the Indo-Gangetic Plain in India as a critical vulnerability hotspot where poverty strongly overlaps with yield losses caused by degradation.
India holds the world’s largest share of agricultural holdings at 29.4 percent of the global total, while a typical Indian farm operates at a small size (median holding size: 0.5 ha; 2016 data).
This fragmentation means that while land degradation is severe, it often remains masked - intensive chemical input use (e.g., fertilizers) continues to maintain yields.
This compensatory strategy, while sustaining output, increases environmental harm and raises the long-term costs borne by farmers.
Nonetheless, successfully reversing just 10 percent of this degradation on current croplands globally could restore production sufficient to feed an estimated 154 million people annually.
Policy Relevance: Tailoring Solutions to Farm Scale and Land Condition
The report stresses that effective policy must be differentiated based on the scale of landholding and the severity of the land’s condition, moving beyond a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
Targeted Smallholder Support: Smallholder-dominated regions, such as much of Asia, require targeted support to sustainably intensify production, as their low yields are often driven by resource constraints (limited access to inputs, credit, technology, and secure tenure) rather than degradation alone. Closing the remaining yield gaps calls for ensuring secure land tenure and inclusive financing mechanisms.
Regulatory Focus for Large Farms: Although they are few in number, large commercial farms (those exceeding 50 hectare, controlling 75 percent of agricultural land globally) manage the majority of the world’s farmland and bear a disproportionate responsibility for achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). Effective policy engagement here involves strict environmental regulations and incentive schemes that reward ecosystem stewardship.
The Avoid-Reduce-Reverse Hierarchy: To achieve LDN, policymakers must adhere to the avoid > reduce > reverse hierarchy promoted by the UNCCD. This calls for a nuanced policy mix that combines regulatory frameworks with incentive-based mechanisms—tailored to local needs, capacities, and responsibilities—to avoid and reduce degradation on actively farmed land, and reverse damage in severely degraded areas.
What is meant by the “Land Degradation Debt” in the report?→ Land Degradation Debt is a quantitative metric representing the total human-induced deterioration of land that has accumulated over time, measured against a baseline of native ecological conditions (pre-agricultural state). This debt is assessed using key degradation indicators like Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) loss, soil erosion, and soil water debt. The approach is designed to differentiate anthropogenic impacts from natural processes, providing a long-term understanding of damage that is often masked by modern input use.
Follow the full report here: State of Food and Agriculture 2025