Food demand and climate straining soils

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

VIENNA (Reuters) - World food demand will surge this century with a leap in population, highlighting a need to protect soils under strain from climate change, experts said on Thursday.

About 150 scientists and government experts will meet in Iceland from August 31-September 4 to try to work out how to safeguard soils from over-use and desertification when more food is needed and some farmers are shifting land to biofuels.

"Soil and vegetation are being lost at an alarming rate around the globe, which in turn has devastating effects on food production and accelerates climate change," Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said in a statement.

The planet will need to produce ever more food with the world population set to rise to nine billion by 2050 from 6.1 billion in 2000 and 1.7 billion in 1900.

"With a rising world population and biofuels, more land is needed," said Andres Arnalds, Icelandic head of the meeting's organizing committee.

He said that land degradation and desertification was a "silent crisis" -- according to some estimates, an area the size of Iceland loses it vegetation every year.

U.N. reports this year say that global warming will shift rainfall patterns and cause more frequent floods or droughts, adding to desertification that may mean more hunger for hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia.

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