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Africa produces around 60% of the rice the continent consumes, relying heavily on rice imports to fulfill the rest of the domestic demand. Over the past 10 years, the rice-agricultural area increased nearly 40%, while average yield remained stagnant. Here we used a process-based crop simulation modelling approach combined with local weather, soil, and management datasets to evaluate the potential to increase rice production on existing cropland area in Africa and assess cropland expansion and rice imports by year 2050 for different scenarios of yield intensification. We find that Africa can avoid further increases in rice imports, and even reduce them, through a combination of cropland expansion following the historical trend together with closure of the current exploitable yield gap by half or more. Without substantial increase in rice yields, meeting future rice demand will require larger rice imports and/or land conversion than now. Here the authors demonstrate that cropland expansion following the historical trend together with closing the current exploitable yield gap by half or more across Africa reduces the continent's reliance on land conversions and imports by 2050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutrient budgets help to identify the excess or insufficient use of fertilizers and other nutrient sources in agriculture. They allow for the calculation of indicators, such as the nutrient balance (surplus if positive or deficit if negative) and nutrient use efficiency, that help to monitor agricultural productivity and sustainability across the world. We present a global database of country-level budget estimates for nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) on cropland. The database, disseminated in FAOSTAT, is meant to provide a global reference, synthesizing and continuously updating the state of the art on this topic. The database covers 205 countries and territories, as well as regional and global aggregates, for the period from 1961 to 2020. Results highlight the wide range in nutrient use and nutrient use efficiencies across geographic regions, nutrients, and time. The average N balance on global cropland has remained fairly steady at about 50–55 kg ha -1 yr -1 during the past 15 years, despite increasing N inputs. Regional trends, however, show recent average N surpluses that range from a low of about 10 kg N ha -1 yr -1 in Africa to more than 90 kg N ha -1 yr -1 in Asia. Encouragingly, average global cropland N use efficiency decreased from about 59 % in 1961 to a low of 43 % in 1988, but it has risen since then to a level of 55 %. Phosphorus deficits are mainly found in Africa, whereas potassium deficits occur in Africa and the Americas. This study introduces improvements over previous work in relation to the key nutrient coefficients affecting nutrient budgets and nutrient use efficiency estimates, especially with respect to nutrient removal in crop products, manure nutrient content, atmospheric deposition and crop biological N fixation rates. We conclude by discussing future research directions and highlighting the need to align statistical definitions across research groups as well as to further refine plant and livestock coefficients and expand estimates to all agricultural land, including nutrient flows in meadows and pastures. Further information is available from 10.5061/dryad.hx3ffbgkh (Ludemann et al., 2023b) as well as the FAOSTAT database (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/ESB ; FAO, 2022a) and is updated annually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nutrient budgets help to identify excess or insufficient use of fertilizers and other nutrient sources in agriculture. They allow calculation of indicators such as the nutrient balance (surplus or deficit) and nutrient use efficiency that help in monitoring of agricultural productivity and sustainability across the world. We present a global database of country-level budget estimates for nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) in cropland. The database, disseminated in FAOSTAT, is meant to provide a global reference, synthesizing and continuously updating the state-of-the-art on this topic. The database covers 205 countries and territories, as well as regional and global aggregates, for the period 1961 to 2020. Results highlight the wide range in nutrient use and use efficiencies across geographic regions, nutrients, and time. For the year 2020, the data show regional average N surpluses that range from about 10 kg N ha-1 year-1 in Africa to more than 90 kg N ha-1 year-1 in Asia. Furthermore, they highlight P and K deficits in Africa in 2020 and K deficits for the Americas. This study introduces improvements over previous work in relation to key nutrient coefficients affecting nutrient budgets and use efficiency estimates, especially for nutrient removal in crop products, manure nutrient content, atmospheric deposition and crop biological N fixation rates. We conclude by discussing future research directions, highlighting the need to align statistical definitions across research groups, as well as to further refine plant and livestock coefficients and expand estimates to all agricultural land, including nutrient flows in meadows and pastures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]