Cambridge IGCSE Environmental Management: Land (0680)

This guide covers Topic 2 Land, the second of seven topics in Cambridge IGCSE Environmental Management (0680) for the 2027-2029 series. Where Topic 1 (Natural resources) dealt with rocks, minerals and energy, Topic 2 turns to the soil beneath our feet and the farming systems that depend on it – what makes soil productive, how farmers try to grow more food from it, and what happens when land is managed badly.

Soil erosion is one of the syllabus’s clearest examples of a human-environment feedback loop: unsustainable land use degrades the very resource that farming depends on, which then forces farmers into even more marginal, erosion-prone land. Understanding that loop – rather than treating 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 as three unconnected checklists – is what this topic is really testing.

Where this fits in 0680

Topic 2 is a bridge between the geology of Topic 1 and the water, atmosphere and ecosystem topics that follow. Soil sits at the intersection of rock, water, air and living organisms, so this topic draws together ideas candidates will meet again – weathering from Topic 1, water availability from Topic 3, and ecosystem health from Topic 5 – while introducing food production as a theme in its own right.

Syllabus coverage

CAMBRIDGE IGCSE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT (0680) — TOPIC 2 LAND

2.1 Soils and crop growth

• The composition of soils: mineral particles (sand, silt, clay), organic content (living organisms and decomposed organic matter), gases and water
• Why composition matters for crop growth: mineral particle mix, nutrient content (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium ions), pH, pore space, gas and water content and drainage, and ease of cultivation
• Why loam soils are considered an ideal medium for crops – the right combination of particles and pore spaces, good moisture retention, useful organic and inorganic content, adequate drainage and ease of cultivation
• Weather as the day-to-day condition of the atmosphere, and how wet and dry seasons affect crop growth
• The conditions for an optimum rate of photosynthesis and crop growth: length of growing season, weather conditions and daylight hours

2.2 Food production and crop yield

• Types of agriculture: arable, pastoral and mixed; subsistence and commercial; intensive; monoculture
• Sustainable food production, defined as producing enough food for the present generation using methods that let future generations keep growing food from the same land
• Strategies to raise food production and crop yield: mixed cropping, intercropping and crop rotation; improved irrigation (trickle/drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting, automated watering); mechanisation; genetically modified organisms; controlled environments (greenhouses, hydroponics, aeroponics); managed grazing; urban farming; agroforestry; inorganic and organic fertilisers; and chemical or biological pest control
• The impacts of unsustainable agricultural practice: food wastage, food shortages from cash crops or biofuel crops displacing food crops, mismanaged irrigation causing erosion and salinisation, pesticide and fertiliser overuse, nutrient exhaustion, deforestation and monoculture-driven biodiversity loss

2.3 Soil erosion

• Causes of soil erosion: unsustainable farming, deforestation, farming on steep slopes, bare soil, and wind and water erosion
• Impacts of soil erosion: silting of rivers, desertification, mass movement (landslides, rockslides, mudslides), habitat and biodiversity loss, reduced crop yield, malnutrition and famine, and displacement of people
• Strategies to reduce soil erosion: terracing, contour ploughing, bunds, wind breaks, maintaining vegetation cover, and adding organic matter to improve soil structure

A worked example helps connect the three sub-topics. Take a hillside farm on the edge of a growing city. Its soil starts as a workable loam (2.1), well suited to mixed cropping. Population pressure pushes the farmer toward monoculture and clearance of the surrounding vegetation to expand cultivated area (2.2), which strips the roots that previously bound the soil together. The next heavy rains wash topsoil into the valley river, silting it downstream and cutting the following season’s yield (2.3) – at which point terracing, contour ploughing or maintaining a vegetation buffer become the practical fixes examiners expect candidates to suggest. Working through a chain like this, rather than memorising 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 as separate lists, is what turns recall into the application Cambridge rewards in Paper 2’s structured questions.

How to approach it

The three sub-topics build a cause-and-effect chain that examiners like to test across a single question: soil composition (2.1) determines how land is farmed (2.2), and poor farming choices are the leading cause of soil erosion (2.3). Rather than learning each list in isolation, practise tracing this chain both forwards – how does a soil property affect the choice of crop or irrigation method? – and backwards, from a described erosion problem back to the farming decision that likely caused it. Cambridge structured questions frequently give a scenario (a hillside farm, a region prone to drought, a monoculture plantation) and ask candidates to identify which strategies from 2.2 or 2.3 would help; matching the specific strategy to the specific problem, rather than listing every strategy you know, is what earns application and evaluation marks. It is also worth being precise about definitions the syllabus states explicitly, such as “sustainable food production” and the difference between subsistence and commercial agriculture, since these are common short recall questions on Paper 1. Command words matter here too: a “describe” question on soil composition wants the named components in context, while an “explain and evaluate” question on erosion strategies wants candidates to weigh a strategy’s effectiveness against its cost or practicality in the given scenario, not simply name it.

Official syllabus

Cambridge IGCSE Environmental Management (0680) syllabus for exams in 2027, 2028 and 2029 — cambridgeinternational.org.