•The global human population is constantly on the increase, statistics show that there are over a hundred million new births per year with the global birth rate always exceeding the death rate (Bongaarts, 2009).
•This presents an array of issues with respect to the demand for basic human needs. To ensure that disaster does not occur due to imbalance between the demand and availability of food, cloth and shelter, special focus has to be put on agriculture; a factor that has a strong bearing on all the three afore mentioned human needs.
•For agriculture to effectively take place, there must be land that is available and suitable (Bongaarts, 2009). However, agricultural land has also been on the decline due to increased population that has brought about necessity for more land for human settlement.
Why is agricultural land important?
•Agricultural land is fundamental for the production of food, pastures, raw materials, and for the rearing of livestock (United Nations Glossary of Statistical Terms, 2001), which in turn are responsible for the sustainment of both man and livestock. Hence, by ensuring that agricultural land is well managed to ensure its availability and suitability, and that reclamation is undertaken where it is needed but not available or suitable, man is sure of provisions for his basic needs and his subsequent continuity of life.
•Critical issues such as
i. global hunger
iii.soil erosion
iv.air pollution
can be well contained by proper maintenance and utilization of agricultural land; this is by growing staple crops on large scales, employing people to perform planting, weeding, harvesting and other farming activities and planting of artificial forests that will curb erosion and absorb carbon emissions respectively.
Management and sustainment of agricultural land
•Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) categorizes agricultural land as follows:
Permanent meadows and pastures
Both national and international policies should use the above categorization as the basis for the formulation of policies to govern the acquisition, maintenance and utilization of agricultural land.
Management and sustainment of agricultural land
•Most countries have realized the importance of having and maintaining large agricultural land and as such have moved into processes of reclaiming what would be considered waste-land and converting them into a resource that is suitable for cultivation.
•Such reclaimed lands include inland water bodies such as swamps, and arid areas such as deserts. Both have different and specific management and sustainment plans, whereas the former requires pure suitable soil added to it, the later requires reclaiming practices such as large scale artificial irrigation.
•These practices should be adopted by all countries under a common treaty.
Challenges of Land Reclamation
•The cost of land reclamation is one of the major challenges especially to developing countries, although the United Nations (2003) states that its arm; "the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), finances agricultural development programs and projects", more has to be done to ensure such funding is accessible and enough to support major national land reclamation projects.
•Other challenges that face reclamation of agricultural land are caused by improper human activities such as poor farming methods which include and natural disasters such as floods that may cause irreversible soil erosion that can render very large agricultural land useless.
