Tropical deforestation has many consequences, amongst which alteration of the hydrological cycle and loss of habitat and biodiversity are the focus of much public interest and scientific research. Here we examine the potential biodiversity and hydrological impacts of an extreme deforestation...

Although irrigation in Africa has the potential to boost agricultural productivities by at least 50%, food production on the continent is almost entirely rainfed. The area equipped for irrigation, currently slightly more than 13 million hectares, makes up just 6% of the total cultivated area....

We describe a new crop allocation model that adds further methodological and data enhancements to the available crop downscaling modeling. The model comprises the estimates of crop area, yield and production for 20 major crops under four rainfed and irrigated production systems across a global...

Large gaps exist in our knowledge of the current geographic distribution and spatial patterns of performance of crops, and these gaps are unlikely to be filled. In addition, even the spatial scale of many sub-national statistical reporting units remains too coarse to capture patterns of spatial...

The world's poorest and most vulnerable farmers on the whole have not benefited from international agricultural research and development. Past efforts have tried to increase the production of countries in more favourable environments; farmers with relatively higher potential for improvement...