Science
17 July 2015 vol 349, issue 6245, pages 209-340
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl

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Policy Forum
Global Nutrition
Metrics for land-scarce agriculture
Ruth DeFries1,*, Jessica Fanzo2, Roseline Remans3,4, Cheryl Palm3, Stephen Wood1,3,
Tal L. Anderman5
Author Affiliations
1Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
2Institute of Human Nutrition, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
3Agriculture and Food Security Center, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
4Bioversity International, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
5Environmental Defense Fund, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Summary
Over the past half-century, the paradigm for agricultural development has been to maximize yields through intensifying production, particularly for cereal crops (1). Increasing production of high-yielding cereals—wheat, rice, and maize—has replaced more nutrient-rich cereals, which has eroded the content of essential dietary nutrients in the world’s cereal supply. New approaches are needed to produce healthy foods, rich in essential nutrients, with efficient use of land. Standard yield metrics that measure the quantity of production are inadequate to assess progress toward this goal; thus, we propose alternative metrics of nutritional yields.