​Global food prices have been unstable for at least the last five years in spite of the technological innovations in food production over the last 50 years – the innovations that range from the development of seed varieties and chemical inputs to food processing and storage processes.

One of the major weaknesses in the current global food production system is the absence of policy incentives in three key areas in food production - women, dryland productivity and proper land-use accounting.

The world’s drylands – the arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid zones – make up 44% of all cultivated systems. One in every three plants that are under cultivation today originated from these ecosystems and 50% of all livestock is located here. But land degradation in the drylands and elsewhere are undermining global food production, and with it food price stability.

Each year in the drylands, 12 million hectares of land that could produce 20 million tons of grain is lost through desertification and drought alone. Yet, from the Sahel and Horn of Africa to India and China, most of the food price hotspots are also drought and desertification hotspots.

Globally, we are losing 75 billion tons of fertile soil every year while more than 1.5 billion people, a majority of whom are poor, depend on degrading land for food. How can we sustain stability in food production when the land and soil resources that are the backbone of agriculture are eroded year after year?

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