If you read the book by Prof. David Montgomery entitled "Dirt- the erosion of civilization" he details that soil is another limiting factor that could see the end of population expansion on the planet. Soil as the basis of all our food is being lost at a much greater rate than it can be created: the conclusion is inescapable. Joff

Unfortunately the most important "solution" was not listed - stopping population growth. If you don't do that then all the other measures become meaningless. It just shows you how hopeless the situation is when this scientifically trained person cannot bring themselves to mention this obvious fact.

Its all coming together. Climate change, droughts and floods, new viruses and diseases, WMDs, increased military spending and research into scary new weapons, soil and land degradation, overpopulation, peak oil etc etc.
It really is looking like a race to see what kills us off first. Will it be climate change, famine, disease, war? Whichever it will be greatly deserved and nobodies fault but our own. Humanity is little more than a plague on this planet and would not be missed. Let the ants or the bees evolve a society. They couldnt do worse than we have.

Hi
To misquote an expresident of the USA, 'It's the population,Stupid!

To many people.
Also not enough water seeing the number of desalination plants are being built as there is insufficient run off to meet our needs.
And the politicians (well big business) want to increase the population (four more Sydney's) they are mad and totally our of touch with the real world.
That means more desalination plants and the power stations to supply them and all producing pollution adding to our problems.

"Yet, for some reason, agriculture has been largely able to avoid the attention of emissions reductions policies."

Could that reason simply be food security? Although a more cynical mind would conclude that it would be to avoid paying farmers for the carbon they sequestor.

It is misleading to play the cars/boats/planes emissions card because most of the worlds population don't actually use them but we all eat, need clothes and shelter. Go a step further and look how many of the worlds population have access to elecricity, and consider whether it is in fact at all fair to compare agriculture to the total emissions, considering the expansion of the fossil-fuel economy.
Don't forget land use changes include forestry(building,paper) urban expansion and mining, it's not fair to account the full amount to agriculture.

I'm not exactly sure whether the 30% of anthropogenic emmissions attributable to agriculture are per annum, or cummulative over millenia. The US for instance claims to be a net sequestor of "landuse change" carbon. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/land.html