NEW maps show that the Earth is rapidly running out of fertile land and that food production will soon be unable to keep up with the world’s burgeoning population.
The maps reveal that more than one third of the world’s land is being used to grow crops or graze cattle.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined satellite land-cover images with agricultural census data from every country to create detailed maps of global land use. Each grid square was 10 kilometres across and showed the most prevalent land use.