Abstract
Africa is classified as the continent with the highest threat caused by a changing earth climate. This threat is a result of interaction between diverse stressing factors which are already indicated in local ecosystems. These climatic effects are more visible in Africa than on any other continent or regions in the world. The interactions of climate change and anthropogenic caused environmental influences are specifically distinct like fire clearance, overfishing, and food security. Environmental and agricultural resources are fundamentals for social, economic, and ecologic development and essential for African countries. With increased interferences in the ecological balance of ecosystems, booming productions are one of the major and most serious effects on soil degradation. With indicators like soil wetness, pH, water-holding-capacity, soil fertility, drought etc. the productivity of different soils can be evaluated. With this evaluation, it will be possible to estimate the economic efficiency, and therefore concrete market potentials. Against this background, the impact of soil degradation will be investigated on examples of agricultural production in Africa. The importance to understand the market relevance and key markets in the agricultural sector is essential for the success of agricultural production in Africa.
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Notes
- 1.
Since 2008, the term ‘land grabbing’ gained notoriety around the globe. It refers to large-scale land acquisitions mainly by private investors but also by public investors and agribusiness that buy farmland or lease it on a long-term basis to produce agricultural commodities. These international investors, as well as the public, semi-public or private sellers, often operate in legal grey areas and in a no man’s land between traditional land rights and modern forms of property. In many cases of land grabbing, one could speak of a land reform from above, or of the establishment of new colonial relationships imposed by the private sector (http://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/land-grabbing.html). For more information, see for instance Behnassi and Yaya (2011).
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Pollmann, O., Podruzsik, S. (2019). The Impact of Soil Degradation on Agricultural Production in Africa. In: Behnassi, M., Pollmann, O., Gupta, H. (eds) Climate Change, Food Security and Natural Resource Management . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97091-2_11
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