1) Global food prices spiked in 2008 due to declining global food stocks and rising demand from population growth and dietary changes. This highlighted the world's inability to consistently produce enough food and raised concerns about achieving global food security.
2) Achieving a "second green revolution" through agricultural innovations that double food production by 2030 is seen as necessary to feed a projected world population of 9 billion by mid-century.
3) Rising meat consumption in developing countries like China is increasing global demand for grain, as it takes 5-10 times as much grain to produce the equivalent calories from meat as from eating grain directly. This diversion of grain to livestock is exacerbating global food security challenges.
Humans now use 40-50% of freshwater for irrigation, households, and industry, doubling water withdrawals in the last 40 years. More land has been converted to cropland in the past 30 years than the prior 150. One quarter of Earth's land is now cultivated systems. Since 1980, 35% of mangroves and 20% of coral reefs have been destroyed or degraded. At least one quarter of marine fish stocks are overharvested, with the global fish catch declining since the 1980s due to overfishing. To meet rising global population and demand, food production will need to double by 2030, requiring another green revolution to increase agricultural yields in half the time as the original in the mid-
This document provides a summary of a student paper analyzing the impact of the Columbian Exchange, specifically the introduction and cultivation of sweet potatoes and maize, on 20th century China. It discusses how sweet potatoes arrived in China in the 1590s through the merchant Chen Zhenlong and were widely adopted. Maize was also introduced starting in the 1500s and proved adaptable to diverse climates. Both crops became important staples, especially for peasants, and helped increase food production and mitigate famines, though cultivation levels of sweet potatoes declined after the 1970s.
The document discusses the global issue of famine and malnutrition. It begins by describing the stark reality of hunger faced by the majority of the world's population, estimating that 500 million people suffer from some form of hunger and 1.5 billion suffer from malnutrition. It then discusses the causes and effects of widespread famine, including lack of adequate nutrition leading to disease and death. The document warns that with world food reserves at record low levels and populations continuing to rise rapidly, the global food crisis poses one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced with the risk of chaos and conflict if not addressed.
B4FA 2012 Tanzania: The challenge of food security and sustainability for 9bn...b4fa
Presentation at the November 2012 dialogue workshop of the Biosciences for Farming in Africa media fellowship programme in Arusha, Tanzania.
Please see www.b4fa.org for more information
WSPA gave me permission to use their content for my website. One of the PDFs I found was too big for my website so I repurposed the content into a slideshow.
Feeding a growing world population with the aid of scienceeli_rothstein
It is challenging enough trying to rustle up enough food to feed a planet that already runs to seven billion people, and which is predicted to add a further two billion mouths by the middle of the century, without wasting so much of the food that we have managed to grow, cultivate, milk and rear.
Poyry - Global Diet: A menu with radical business consequences - Point of ViewPöyry
There is nothing more everyday and downto-earth than choosing what to eat. With increased living standards, the range of choice expands. At the same time, we are here dealing with a powerful engine of disruption. The hand that picks the milk carton at the store is the very “visible hand”
that disturbs global patterns of resource use and trade flows. Land use, energy consumption, mining and the consumption of packaging and hygiene products are but a few examples.
Humans now use 40-50% of freshwater for irrigation, households, and industry, doubling water withdrawals in the last 40 years. More land has been converted to cropland in the past 30 years than the prior 150. One quarter of Earth's land is now cultivated systems. Since 1980, 35% of mangroves and 20% of coral reefs have been destroyed or degraded. At least one quarter of marine fish stocks are overharvested, with the global fish catch declining since the 1980s due to overfishing. To meet rising global population and demand, food production will need to double by 2030, requiring another green revolution to increase agricultural yields in half the time as the original in the mid-
This document provides a summary of a student paper analyzing the impact of the Columbian Exchange, specifically the introduction and cultivation of sweet potatoes and maize, on 20th century China. It discusses how sweet potatoes arrived in China in the 1590s through the merchant Chen Zhenlong and were widely adopted. Maize was also introduced starting in the 1500s and proved adaptable to diverse climates. Both crops became important staples, especially for peasants, and helped increase food production and mitigate famines, though cultivation levels of sweet potatoes declined after the 1970s.
The document discusses the global issue of famine and malnutrition. It begins by describing the stark reality of hunger faced by the majority of the world's population, estimating that 500 million people suffer from some form of hunger and 1.5 billion suffer from malnutrition. It then discusses the causes and effects of widespread famine, including lack of adequate nutrition leading to disease and death. The document warns that with world food reserves at record low levels and populations continuing to rise rapidly, the global food crisis poses one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced with the risk of chaos and conflict if not addressed.
B4FA 2012 Tanzania: The challenge of food security and sustainability for 9bn...b4fa
Presentation at the November 2012 dialogue workshop of the Biosciences for Farming in Africa media fellowship programme in Arusha, Tanzania.
Please see www.b4fa.org for more information
WSPA gave me permission to use their content for my website. One of the PDFs I found was too big for my website so I repurposed the content into a slideshow.
Feeding a growing world population with the aid of scienceeli_rothstein
It is challenging enough trying to rustle up enough food to feed a planet that already runs to seven billion people, and which is predicted to add a further two billion mouths by the middle of the century, without wasting so much of the food that we have managed to grow, cultivate, milk and rear.
Poyry - Global Diet: A menu with radical business consequences - Point of ViewPöyry
There is nothing more everyday and downto-earth than choosing what to eat. With increased living standards, the range of choice expands. At the same time, we are here dealing with a powerful engine of disruption. The hand that picks the milk carton at the store is the very “visible hand”
that disturbs global patterns of resource use and trade flows. Land use, energy consumption, mining and the consumption of packaging and hygiene products are but a few examples.
The document summarizes how fossil fuel use enabled unprecedented population growth over the past two centuries by fueling agricultural mechanization and increases in crop yields. As fossil fuels decline, global population will be forced to shrink due to the inability to sustain high-yield industrial agriculture and long-distance food transport without cheap oil. The population may decline to less than 2 billion as fossil fuel depletion reduces our capacity to support large populations.
This document summarizes food and eating habits during the 1930s Great Depression era in the United States. It discusses how agriculture and farming changed due to drought and legislation like the AAA. Soup kitchens provided free or low-cost food to those in need. New convenience foods and packaged goods became popular. Home cooking relied on staples and substitutions as ingredients were not always available. Appliances slowly became more common in homes through the 1930s as well. Unusual meats like squirrel and pigeon were included in popular cookbooks at the time.
Summary Presentation for World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and ...Earth Policy Institute
The document summarizes the key points from the book "A World on the Edge: How To Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse" by Lester R. Brown. It outlines the goals of "Plan B" to stabilize the global population, eradicate poverty, restore the environment, and stabilize the climate. It warns that current trends of population growth, food demand, aquifer depletion and climate change threaten to push the world's systems past a tipping point. Immediate action is needed through increased energy efficiency, renewable energy and reforestation to avoid economic and social collapse.
This document summarizes key points from a book about the new geopolitics of food scarcity. It discusses how population growth and dietary shifts are straining global food supplies. As more people consume resource-intensive meat and fish, demand is outpacing agricultural productivity. Rising food prices risk political instability as over 1 billion people face hunger. Managing population growth and sustainable diets are needed to avoid systemic risks to global food security.
Famine is a significant problem for many developing countries despite a global food surplus. Famine results from a shortage or inability to obtain food, often due to drought causing low food production. It occurs mainly in rural areas where farming and livestock are the primary means of livelihood. Nearly 30 million Africans could face famine in the coming months, with the horn of Africa, southern Africa, and the Sahel region of West Africa most at risk. Causes of famine in Africa include drought, lack of self-sufficiency requiring imports, armed conflict, environmental degradation, and climate change.
Full planet, empty plates [lester r. brown] summaryKarla Dominguez
The increasing global demand for food is straining supplies and raising prices due to population growth, increased meat consumption, and the conversion of grains into biofuels. Production is limited by soil erosion, water shortages, and plateauing yields exacerbated by rising temperatures. Over a billion people now face chronic hunger, especially in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Rapid population growth in developing nations risks overwhelming land and resources unless fertility declines, but stabilizing world population will be necessary to sustainably feed the planet long-term. Reducing meat consumption, reversing biofuels policies, and making wise individual choices around transportation and diet can help address this growing crisis.
Thomas Malthus argued in his 1798 work "An Essay on the Principle of Population" that population growth occurs exponentially while food production only increases arithmetically, leading to a food shortage crisis. He predicted population would outgrow the global food supply and force a decrease in available food per person. Malthus believed moral restraints like late marriage and abstinence could help check excessive population growth, especially among the poor and working classes.
The globalization of food production has a long history dating back to European colonialism in the 17th century. Today, supermarkets showcase produce from around the world due to improvements in transportation technology and reductions in trade barriers and tariffs. However, globalized food systems also contribute to ongoing issues of malnutrition and poverty in developing countries by prioritizing export crops over domestic food production and trapping poor farmers in systems of dependence.
This thesis explores the potential for rooftop agriculture in urban areas. It examines case studies of existing rooftop gardens in cities like Toronto, New York, and Italy. The document discusses the benefits of local urban agriculture, including increased food security, community building, and environmental benefits from reducing fossil fuel use in industrial agriculture. It also notes challenges like the technical difficulties of growing food on rooftops. The thesis will evaluate the potential to expand rooftop agriculture and reduce dependence on industrial food systems.
Hunger in America discusses the problem of hunger in the United States. While many people are unaware, hunger is affecting not just the homeless, but also those with low-paying jobs or who have been laid off. Forty percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten each year, ending up in landfills. Small solutions can add up to make a big impact on hunger. The document calls for more advertising of programs providing free meals to children, as well as more funding for shelters, to help address the issue.
Global challenges to food security and poverty alleviationAlain Vidal
Conference given at University Paris-Saclay / AgroParisTech on 19 November 2018 as part of Master CLUES (Sequence "Everyone Eating Well within Environmental Limits)
- Overconsumption by wealthy Western nations is a major cause of global poverty and resource scarcity. Nearly half of the world's population lives on less than $2.50 a day and does not have access to sufficient food, water, shelter or income.
- Unequal distribution of resources, particularly fertile land that is disproportionately occupied by wealthy farmers for export crops, exacerbates poverty. Reducing consumption in wealthy countries and redistributing resources more equitably could significantly diminish global destitution.
- Solutions proposed include land reform policies to make fertile land more affordable and accessible to local farmers, government policies to protect domestic food production, and limiting consumption and waste in wealthy nations to leave more resources available for poorer populations.
Geofile April 2007 Globalisation Of Foodguest3f4d16
Food production has become highly globalized and consolidated in recent decades, with a small number of huge multinational corporations now controlling most aspects of the food system from farming to retail. This has led to environmental and social problems like deforestation, pollution, exploitation of migrant workers, and unfair impacts on small farmers. At the same time, industrialized food production methods have significant hidden health and environmental costs despite improving crop yields.
While food production has increased globally, 870 million people still experience hunger. The top causes of world hunger are war and conflict, weather and climate change, poor agricultural practices, population growth, and poverty. These issues disrupt food supply and production. Additionally, over a billion tons of food are wasted each year, while millions lack access to adequate nutrition. Reducing food waste and empowering communities through education, infrastructure, and stable political systems could help address the complex, systemic causes of world hunger.
The document outlines a group research project on social action to fight hunger. It defines hunger and discusses its main causes such as poverty, war, natural disasters, lack of infrastructure, and environmental degradation. Some key facts are presented, such as over 900 million hungry people worldwide and 15 million children dying of hunger each year. The document proposes awareness campaigns, fundraising, volunteering, advocacy, and political engagement as actions to address this issue.
Famine is caused by a lack of access to food that can lead to starvation and death, usually impacting millions. It is the result of long-term social, political, and economic processes rather than singular causes. In 2010, 925 million people experienced hunger worldwide. Poverty is the principal cause of hunger as many lack sufficient land or income to purchase enough food, despite global food production being enough to provide everyone with at least 2,720 kilocalories per day. Progress in reducing world hunger has been marginal, with the number of undernourished people increasing to over 1 billion rather than being halved by 2015 as targeted.
Hunger and Famine in Africa discusses the ongoing issues of malnutrition, poverty, and food insecurity across the continent. Over 6 million children die from malnutrition each year and 60% of Africans live on less than $1 per day. The causes include lack of investment in rural areas by governments, corruption, droughts due to inconsistent rains and climate change, and population growth outpacing food production. The effects are widespread refugee crises, small businesses suffering, land grabs by foreign nations, water shortages, and increased disease. Long term solutions proposed include education to help populations sustain themselves, birth control to slow population growth, and accepting genetically modified foods which could increase yields.
The document discusses the historical causes and context of the famine in Somalia in 2011. It outlines how colonialism disrupted traditional agriculture in Somalia and other African nations by imposing cash crops for export and taxation, leading to vulnerability. Government instability and violence by the militant group El Shabaab exacerbated the effects of the drought in 2011 by preventing aid distribution. A long history of conflict, humanitarian crises, and instability in Somalia since colonial times and its independence has damaged infrastructure and institutions.
The document discusses topics related to the novel When Rain Clouds Gather including images of Botswana, colonialism in Africa, tribalism, and agriculture. It provides context on Botswana's history of colonial exploitation. Tribalism is explored as a way humans organized for survival for thousands of years. Agriculture in Botswana and in the novel is described as challenging due to the country's dry climate and sandy, saline soil, though it remains important for domestic food production. The main character Gilbert in the novel works on an agricultural project aiming to control the climate and improve farming conditions.
Richard Proudfit witnessed starvation in South America and felt called to address hunger. He founded Kids Against Hunger to significantly reduce starvation among children globally. The nonprofit packages and distributes a fortified food mix developed by scientists that provides complete nutrition in an affordable, shelf-stable meal. Volunteers can help by packaging meals at facilities, hosting mobile packing events, or donating funds to cover meal costs. With support, Kids Against Hunger aims to help solve the enormous problem of hunger affecting over 1 billion people.
International Trade Theories (Revised)Gerry Gatawa
This document summarizes the political economy of international trade. It discusses how governments often intervene in trade to protect domestic groups, using instruments like tariffs, subsidies, import quotas, and voluntary export restraints. Tariffs raise the costs of imports but also domestic prices. Subsidies help domestic producers but are costly for consumers and taxpayers. The document analyzes examples of trade interventions and their effects, such as the EU ban on hormone-treated beef and US steel tariffs. It also discusses the emergence of institutions like the GATT and WTO that aim to liberalize trade.
The document summarizes how fossil fuel use enabled unprecedented population growth over the past two centuries by fueling agricultural mechanization and increases in crop yields. As fossil fuels decline, global population will be forced to shrink due to the inability to sustain high-yield industrial agriculture and long-distance food transport without cheap oil. The population may decline to less than 2 billion as fossil fuel depletion reduces our capacity to support large populations.
This document summarizes food and eating habits during the 1930s Great Depression era in the United States. It discusses how agriculture and farming changed due to drought and legislation like the AAA. Soup kitchens provided free or low-cost food to those in need. New convenience foods and packaged goods became popular. Home cooking relied on staples and substitutions as ingredients were not always available. Appliances slowly became more common in homes through the 1930s as well. Unusual meats like squirrel and pigeon were included in popular cookbooks at the time.
Summary Presentation for World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and ...Earth Policy Institute
The document summarizes the key points from the book "A World on the Edge: How To Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse" by Lester R. Brown. It outlines the goals of "Plan B" to stabilize the global population, eradicate poverty, restore the environment, and stabilize the climate. It warns that current trends of population growth, food demand, aquifer depletion and climate change threaten to push the world's systems past a tipping point. Immediate action is needed through increased energy efficiency, renewable energy and reforestation to avoid economic and social collapse.
This document summarizes key points from a book about the new geopolitics of food scarcity. It discusses how population growth and dietary shifts are straining global food supplies. As more people consume resource-intensive meat and fish, demand is outpacing agricultural productivity. Rising food prices risk political instability as over 1 billion people face hunger. Managing population growth and sustainable diets are needed to avoid systemic risks to global food security.
Famine is a significant problem for many developing countries despite a global food surplus. Famine results from a shortage or inability to obtain food, often due to drought causing low food production. It occurs mainly in rural areas where farming and livestock are the primary means of livelihood. Nearly 30 million Africans could face famine in the coming months, with the horn of Africa, southern Africa, and the Sahel region of West Africa most at risk. Causes of famine in Africa include drought, lack of self-sufficiency requiring imports, armed conflict, environmental degradation, and climate change.
Full planet, empty plates [lester r. brown] summaryKarla Dominguez
The increasing global demand for food is straining supplies and raising prices due to population growth, increased meat consumption, and the conversion of grains into biofuels. Production is limited by soil erosion, water shortages, and plateauing yields exacerbated by rising temperatures. Over a billion people now face chronic hunger, especially in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Rapid population growth in developing nations risks overwhelming land and resources unless fertility declines, but stabilizing world population will be necessary to sustainably feed the planet long-term. Reducing meat consumption, reversing biofuels policies, and making wise individual choices around transportation and diet can help address this growing crisis.
Thomas Malthus argued in his 1798 work "An Essay on the Principle of Population" that population growth occurs exponentially while food production only increases arithmetically, leading to a food shortage crisis. He predicted population would outgrow the global food supply and force a decrease in available food per person. Malthus believed moral restraints like late marriage and abstinence could help check excessive population growth, especially among the poor and working classes.
The globalization of food production has a long history dating back to European colonialism in the 17th century. Today, supermarkets showcase produce from around the world due to improvements in transportation technology and reductions in trade barriers and tariffs. However, globalized food systems also contribute to ongoing issues of malnutrition and poverty in developing countries by prioritizing export crops over domestic food production and trapping poor farmers in systems of dependence.
This thesis explores the potential for rooftop agriculture in urban areas. It examines case studies of existing rooftop gardens in cities like Toronto, New York, and Italy. The document discusses the benefits of local urban agriculture, including increased food security, community building, and environmental benefits from reducing fossil fuel use in industrial agriculture. It also notes challenges like the technical difficulties of growing food on rooftops. The thesis will evaluate the potential to expand rooftop agriculture and reduce dependence on industrial food systems.
Hunger in America discusses the problem of hunger in the United States. While many people are unaware, hunger is affecting not just the homeless, but also those with low-paying jobs or who have been laid off. Forty percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten each year, ending up in landfills. Small solutions can add up to make a big impact on hunger. The document calls for more advertising of programs providing free meals to children, as well as more funding for shelters, to help address the issue.
Global challenges to food security and poverty alleviationAlain Vidal
Conference given at University Paris-Saclay / AgroParisTech on 19 November 2018 as part of Master CLUES (Sequence "Everyone Eating Well within Environmental Limits)
- Overconsumption by wealthy Western nations is a major cause of global poverty and resource scarcity. Nearly half of the world's population lives on less than $2.50 a day and does not have access to sufficient food, water, shelter or income.
- Unequal distribution of resources, particularly fertile land that is disproportionately occupied by wealthy farmers for export crops, exacerbates poverty. Reducing consumption in wealthy countries and redistributing resources more equitably could significantly diminish global destitution.
- Solutions proposed include land reform policies to make fertile land more affordable and accessible to local farmers, government policies to protect domestic food production, and limiting consumption and waste in wealthy nations to leave more resources available for poorer populations.
Geofile April 2007 Globalisation Of Foodguest3f4d16
Food production has become highly globalized and consolidated in recent decades, with a small number of huge multinational corporations now controlling most aspects of the food system from farming to retail. This has led to environmental and social problems like deforestation, pollution, exploitation of migrant workers, and unfair impacts on small farmers. At the same time, industrialized food production methods have significant hidden health and environmental costs despite improving crop yields.
While food production has increased globally, 870 million people still experience hunger. The top causes of world hunger are war and conflict, weather and climate change, poor agricultural practices, population growth, and poverty. These issues disrupt food supply and production. Additionally, over a billion tons of food are wasted each year, while millions lack access to adequate nutrition. Reducing food waste and empowering communities through education, infrastructure, and stable political systems could help address the complex, systemic causes of world hunger.
The document outlines a group research project on social action to fight hunger. It defines hunger and discusses its main causes such as poverty, war, natural disasters, lack of infrastructure, and environmental degradation. Some key facts are presented, such as over 900 million hungry people worldwide and 15 million children dying of hunger each year. The document proposes awareness campaigns, fundraising, volunteering, advocacy, and political engagement as actions to address this issue.
Famine is caused by a lack of access to food that can lead to starvation and death, usually impacting millions. It is the result of long-term social, political, and economic processes rather than singular causes. In 2010, 925 million people experienced hunger worldwide. Poverty is the principal cause of hunger as many lack sufficient land or income to purchase enough food, despite global food production being enough to provide everyone with at least 2,720 kilocalories per day. Progress in reducing world hunger has been marginal, with the number of undernourished people increasing to over 1 billion rather than being halved by 2015 as targeted.
Hunger and Famine in Africa discusses the ongoing issues of malnutrition, poverty, and food insecurity across the continent. Over 6 million children die from malnutrition each year and 60% of Africans live on less than $1 per day. The causes include lack of investment in rural areas by governments, corruption, droughts due to inconsistent rains and climate change, and population growth outpacing food production. The effects are widespread refugee crises, small businesses suffering, land grabs by foreign nations, water shortages, and increased disease. Long term solutions proposed include education to help populations sustain themselves, birth control to slow population growth, and accepting genetically modified foods which could increase yields.
The document discusses the historical causes and context of the famine in Somalia in 2011. It outlines how colonialism disrupted traditional agriculture in Somalia and other African nations by imposing cash crops for export and taxation, leading to vulnerability. Government instability and violence by the militant group El Shabaab exacerbated the effects of the drought in 2011 by preventing aid distribution. A long history of conflict, humanitarian crises, and instability in Somalia since colonial times and its independence has damaged infrastructure and institutions.
The document discusses topics related to the novel When Rain Clouds Gather including images of Botswana, colonialism in Africa, tribalism, and agriculture. It provides context on Botswana's history of colonial exploitation. Tribalism is explored as a way humans organized for survival for thousands of years. Agriculture in Botswana and in the novel is described as challenging due to the country's dry climate and sandy, saline soil, though it remains important for domestic food production. The main character Gilbert in the novel works on an agricultural project aiming to control the climate and improve farming conditions.
Richard Proudfit witnessed starvation in South America and felt called to address hunger. He founded Kids Against Hunger to significantly reduce starvation among children globally. The nonprofit packages and distributes a fortified food mix developed by scientists that provides complete nutrition in an affordable, shelf-stable meal. Volunteers can help by packaging meals at facilities, hosting mobile packing events, or donating funds to cover meal costs. With support, Kids Against Hunger aims to help solve the enormous problem of hunger affecting over 1 billion people.
International Trade Theories (Revised)Gerry Gatawa
This document summarizes the political economy of international trade. It discusses how governments often intervene in trade to protect domestic groups, using instruments like tariffs, subsidies, import quotas, and voluntary export restraints. Tariffs raise the costs of imports but also domestic prices. Subsidies help domestic producers but are costly for consumers and taxpayers. The document analyzes examples of trade interventions and their effects, such as the EU ban on hormone-treated beef and US steel tariffs. It also discusses the emergence of institutions like the GATT and WTO that aim to liberalize trade.
The world's population exceeded 7 billion in 2011 and is projected to increase by 40% over the next 40 years. Egypt's population grew rapidly from 20 million in 1948 to 80 million in 2011, adding 20 million people every 20 years. Rapid population growth is increasing environmental pollution like air, water, noise, and waste as finite resources are used up more quickly and fossil fuels are burned, releasing greenhouse gases.
The document discusses the 12 Gallup Questions that will be used in SAIC's employee engagement survey. It provides background on how Gallup developed the questions to link to key business outcomes. It then explains each question in 2-3 paragraphs, focusing on what research shows about engaged workplaces in relation to that question and how managers can promote high scores. The questions address aspects like understanding expectations, having resources, opportunities to use strengths, recognition, caring supervisors, encouragement, opinions counting, purpose/mission, quality commitment from others, workplace friendships, feedback, and learning/growth opportunities.
The students at Pardilhó School in Portugal adopted an idea from another school in England to create decorative plant pots out of old tires. They painted the used tires and planted flowers and greenery in them. The school hopes to make even more tire planters in the future to beautify their campus.
2 perspectieven op de woonbranche: resultaat Jan des Bouvrie storewebwinkelvakdag
Jan Des Bouvrie schetst de ontwikkelingen in de woonbranche. Tijdens zijn langdurige loopbaan is zijn vak als ontwerper maar ook de functie van de winkel het Arsenaal enorm veranderd. In de presentatie wordt duidelijk waarom een Jan des Bouvrie webwinkel een logische volgende stap is.
Johan Keurentjes legt uit waarom na boeken, cd’s, reizen, kleding en schoenen de woonbranche online van inspiratie naar transactie gaat. Hij gaat in op de ontwikkeling van de JdB shop waarbij onderwerpen als cross-channel retailen en design versus functionaliteit aan de orde zullen komen.
The document discusses key aspects of employment law including contracts of employment, minimum wage, working time, anti-discrimination, and a blog post about a senior executive being dismissed for his beliefs. It covers the basic features of employment contracts, minimum wage varying between countries, how working time has changed since the Industrial Revolution, discrimination being illegal and morally wrong, and the blog questioning if people should be able to express their beliefs without fear of dismissal.
The document outlines a 10-point plan to fix Rhode Island's struggling economy by creating jobs. The plan calls for major reforms including changing the state pension system, reforming welfare programs, reducing property taxes, expanding airports and ports, eliminating various taxes, and making Rhode Island a right-to-work state to attract businesses. The goal is to get ahead of debt, run budget surpluses, lower the tax burden on citizens and businesses, and make Rhode Island very competitive for job creation.
Playing in the Sandbox by Wictor WilénWictor Wilén
This document discusses the SharePoint 2010 sandbox and building sandboxed solutions. It begins with an agenda that includes an overview of what the sandbox is, why it is used, administration and monitoring of the sandbox, and demos of developing sandboxed solutions like web parts, workflows, and proxies. It then covers the key capabilities and limitations of developing in the sandbox, as well as workarounds. Throughout there are code demos showing how to build sandboxed solutions in Visual Studio 2010.
Facebook collects various types of user information including data from user accounts, friends' shares, actions on Facebook, devices used to access Facebook, and third parties. Facebook uses this information to provide services to users and third parties like advertisers and developers. Facebook only shares user information with permission, after providing notice, or after removing personally identifiable information. Facebook's privacy settings allow users to control who can see their posts, who can contact them, how to block other users, and customize privacy on a granular level for different types of content and sharing. The presentation provides an overview of Facebook's privacy policy and tools users can use to manage their privacy settings.
School systems in England, America, Britain, and Australia were discussed. Primary schools in these countries are generally for children aged 5-11 years old and are compulsory. Secondary schools are for older children aged 11-16 years old. School years are typically divided into terms with breaks in between. Students generally wear school uniforms.
This document provides an overview of constitutional law in Canada, specifically focusing on federalism and the division of powers. It outlines the key constitutional documents and statutes that establish Canada's federal system, including the Constitution Act, 1867 and how it divides powers between the federal and provincial governments under sections 91 and 92. It also discusses some of the main doctrines that have been developed by the courts to interpret the division of powers, such as the living tree doctrine, double aspect approach, and pith and substance analysis of legislative jurisdiction.
Centennial College hosted an engaging marketing competition where their business students placed fourth against teams from 12 other colleges. The competition featured a quiz bowl where students demonstrated their skills answering questions. As a volunteer, the author gained experience and pride in their college. They also felt proud presenting in class and receiving high marks, building their confidence.
O documento lista e descreve várias partes do corpo humano, incluindo olhos (azuis, verdes, castanhos), queixo, bochechas, sobrancelhas, cílios, orelhas, cabelo (loiro, ruivo), pescoço, braços, cotovelos, mãos, dedos, pernas, coxas, joelhos, batatas da perna, tornozelos, pés e calcanhares. O documento agradece ao leitor no final.
The document discusses using Python for scientific applications. It describes NumPy arrays as efficient data structures for numerical computing and SciPy as a library for scientific algorithms. It notes that NumPy provides N-dimensional arrays and universal functions for fast array operations, while SciPy builds on NumPy with modules for domains like linear algebra, optimization, integration and more. Together NumPy and SciPy provide the fundamental tools for scientific computing with Python.
Page Page Malthus Redux Is Doomsday Upon Us, Again The New Y.docxbunyansaturnina
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Malthus Redux: Is Doomsday Upon Us, Again? The New York Times June 15, 2008 Sunday Correction Appended
1 of 1 DOCUMENT
The New York Times
June 15, 2008 Sunday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final
Malthus Redux: Is Doomsday Upon Us, Again?
BYLINE: By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
SECTION: Section WK; Column 0; Week in Review Desk; THE WORLD; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1242 words
During the last American food-and-gas-price crisis, in the 1970s, one of my colleagues on the Berkeley student newspaper told me that he and his semi-communal housemates had taken a vote. They'd calculated they could afford meat or coffee. They chose coffee.
The decision was slightly less effete than it sounds now -- the Starbucks clone wars were still some years off, so he was talking about choosing Yuban over ground chuck. But it nonetheless said something about us as spoiled Americans. Riots were relatively common in Berkeley in those days. But they were never about food. (That particular revolution was starting without us on Shattuck Avenue, where Chez Panisse had just opened.)
However, elsewhere on the globe, people were on the edge of starvation. Grain prices were soaring, rice stocks plummeting. In Ethiopia and Cambodia, people were well over the edge, and food riots helped lead to the downfall of Emperor Haile Selassie and the victory of the Khmer Rouge.
Now it's happening again. While Americans grumble about gasoline prices, food riots have seared Bangladesh, Egypt and African countries. In Haiti, they cost the prime minister his job. Rice-bowl countries like China, India and Indonesia have restricted exports and rice is shipped under armed guard.
And again, Thomas Malthus, a British economist and demographer at the turn of the 19th century, is being recalled to duty. His basic theory was that populations, which grow geometrically, will inevitably outpace food production, which grows arithmetically. Famine would result. The thought has underlain doomsday scenarios both real and imagined, from the Great Irish Famine of 1845 to the Population Bomb of 1968.
But over the last 200 years, with the Industrial Revolution, the Transportation Revolution, the Green Revolution and the Biotech Revolution, Malthus has been largely discredited. The wrenching dislocations of the last few months do not change that, most experts say. But they do show the kinds of problems that can emerge.
The whole world has never come close to outpacing its ability to produce food. Right now, there is enough grain grown on earth to feed 10 billion vegetarians, said Joel E. Cohen, professor of populations at Rockefeller University and the author of ''How Many People Can the Earth Support?'' But much of it is being fed to cattle, the S.U.V.'s of the protein world, which are in turn guzzled by the world's wealthy.
Theoretically, there is enough acreage already planted to keep the planet fed forever, because 10 billion humans is roughly where the United Nations predicts that.
The Food Movement, RisingJUNE 10, 2010Michael Pollan.docxarnoldmeredith47041
The Food Movement, Rising
JUNE 10, 2010
Michael Pollan
Getty Images
Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
by Joel Salatin
Polyface, 338 pp., $23.95 (paper)
All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?
by Joel Berg
Seven Stories, 351 pp., $22.95 (paper)
Eating Animals
by Jonathan Safran Foer
Little, Brown, 341 pp., $25.99
Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities
by Carlo Petrini, with a foreword by Alice Waters
Chelsea Green, 155 pp., $20.00 (paper)
The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society
by Janet A. Flammang
University of Illinois Press, 325 pp., $70.00; $25.00 (paper)
1.
Food Made Visible
It might sound odd to say this about something people deal with at
least three times a day, but food in America has been more or less
invisible, politically speaking, until very recently. At least until the
early 1970s, when a bout of food price inflation and the appearance
of books critical of industrial agriculture (by Wendell Berry, Francis
Moore Lappé, and Barry Commoner, among others) threatened to
propel the subject to the top of the national agenda, Americans have
not had to think very hard about where their food comes from, or
what it is doing to the planet, their bodies, and their society.
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1 of 11 6/18/2013 2:10 PM
Michelle Obama at a farmers’ market near the
White House, September 17, 2009
Most people count this a blessing. Americans spend a smaller
percentage of their income on food than any people in history
—slightly less than 10 percent—and a smaller amount of their time preparing it: a mere thirty-one
minutes a day on average, including clean-up. The supermarkets brim with produce summoned from
every corner of the globe, a steady stream of novel food products (17,000 new ones each year) crowds
the middle aisles, and in the freezer case you can find “home meal replacements” in every conceivable
ethnic stripe, demanding nothing more of the eater than opening the package and waiting for the
microwave to chirp. Considered in the long sweep of human history, in which getting food dominated
not just daily life but economic and political life as well, having to worry about food as little as we do,
or did, seems almost a kind of dream.
The dream that the age-old “food problem” had been largely solved for most Americans was sustained
by the tremendous postwar increases in the productivity of American farmers, made possible by cheap
fossil fuel (the key ingredient in both chemical fertilizers and pesticides) and changes in agricultural
policies. Ask.
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Impact Of The Agricultural Revolution
The Major Causes Of The Agricultural Revolution
Summary Of The Agricultural Revolution
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Agricultural And Industrial Revolution
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How Did The Agricultural Revolution Affect Europe
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The Pros And Cons Of The Agricultural Revolution
British Agricultural Revolution
Physiocrats: The Agricultural Revolution
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The agricultural revolution marked the transition to stationary farming and increased food production. This allowed populations to grow and civilizations to form as people no longer needed to focus solely on finding food. However, it also caused hardship as many small farmers lost access to land in England. The enclosure movement promoted more efficient farming but reduced land access for the poor. Overall, the agricultural revolution enabled significant population growth and economic development through increased trade and specialization, though it also brought some social disruption.
The document discusses world population trends, including that the world population has exceeded 6.5 billion people and continues to increase by about 76 million per year. It notes that scientists are worried the population will double to over 12 billion people within 50 years. It also discusses population control methods used in China, including the one-child policy introduced in 1979.
The body for this paper IS however write a introduction.docxwrite5
This document discusses the causes of famine and how societies have addressed famine throughout history. It argues that while natural causes like drought and flooding can contribute to famine, human factors like conflict, poor governance, and climate change caused by human activity are equally or more responsible. The document also outlines how modern agricultural advances, transportation networks, and international cooperation have helped alleviate famine in recent decades when natural disasters strike. However, it notes artificially-induced famines from war and unrest are still possible.
World on the Edge - How To Prevent Environmental and Economic CollapseHans Joergen Rasmussen
This document provides an overview of the book "World on the Edge: How To Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse" by Lester R. Brown. It summarizes the book's main points including the goals of Plan B to stabilize population, eradicate poverty, restore the earth's natural systems, and stabilize the climate. It warns that current trends of population growth, environmental degradation, and climate change threaten global food security, economic stability, and could lead to widespread social and political unrest if not addressed through coordinated international action outlined in Plan B.
The document discusses how population growth affects global food production and food security. It notes that the world population is growing exponentially and is expected to increase by 30% by 2050, placing greater demands on food supply. While agricultural production needs to increase by almost 70% to meet rising demands, current trends suggest production has declined in some regions. The relationship between population growth and agricultural growth likely varies between developing and developed regions. Food insecurity is a major threat if agricultural production cannot keep pace with population growth.
The document discusses nutrients and their importance for health. It defines nutrients as essential substances needed for growth and health, dividing them into caloric nutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fats) and non-caloric nutrients (water, minerals, vitamins). Carbohydrates, proteins and fats are described in detail along with their functions, food sources and types. The document also covers water, minerals like calcium and iron, vitamin groups and specific vitamins. It discusses calories and provides recommendations for daily calorie and nutrient intake for teenagers. Finally, it describes the nutrition pyramid as a visual guide for healthy eating.
Energy is defined as the ability of a physical system to do work on other systems and is measured in Joules. There are different forms of energy including chemical, thermal, mechanical, and electrical. Energy sources fall into two groups - fossil sources like coal, petroleum and natural gas, and renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal and tidal. Photosynthesis is the origin of energy.
1. Students from several countries who participated in a partnership program in Luxembourg were surveyed about their experiences.
2. Most students agreed or strongly agreed that their English improved during the visit and that they felt comfortable. However, opinions on how well organized school activities were more mixed.
3. The after school activities were widely viewed as interesting and educational. Most students expressed wanting to participate in similar experiences again in the future.
Social sustainability encompasses human rights, labor rights, and corporate governance. It aims to ensure equal access to social resources for current and future generations. The document summarizes the global journey of a pair of Lee Cooper jeans from their production in a Tunisian factory to the raw materials and components from over 10 different countries. It describes the labor conditions for workers in Tunisia and Benin involved in cotton farming and textile production.
The document is a crossword puzzle containing environmental and sustainability terms. The crossword clues include renewable energy sources, recycling, the location of the 1992 Earth Summit, Rachel Carson's influential book about pesticides, limited natural resources, global issues, ethics, cooperation, renewable energy, the ozone layer, fair trade, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai's work on sustainability, ecosystems, solar power, the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace, rainforests, fairness, win-win situations, and innovation.
The document discusses the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) program implemented in the Valencian community of Spain. [1] It describes how the program aims to foster multilingualism through teaching some subjects in English in addition to Spanish and Valencian. [2] It provides details on the number of hours per week devoted to CLIL instruction and the balance between language and content teaching at different school levels. [3] It also notes that schools can choose which subjects to teach via CLIL depending on teacher availability, with the exception of languages and science in primary school.
During the period of September 11th to December 12th, the school accomplished several planned project activities including having one of their logos chosen for an official website, teaching units in physics, biology, and social sciences using the CLIL method to groups of students, and taking a group of 13 students to a meeting in Luxembourg where they presented on their projects. In October, they hosted a partnership meeting at their school and arranged host families for 26 visiting students and teachers, giving the visitors a chance to learn and see the local area. The school also applied and was approved to become a multilingual school next year.
A Comenius project provided a great experience for the author by allowing them to improve their English skills through researching a topic, translating information, and creating a presentation with students from other countries including Poland, Luxembourg, Italy and Sweden. The long effort required was rewarding, as the author was able to meet new people and make friends across cultures that they have maintained contact with, which was the best outcome of the project.
Alternative energy, and sustainable developmentmastx
The document is a presentation by Isabel Mira Tornadijo for the Comenius project "Natural Sciences Natural English" at IES Juan de Garay in Valencia, Spain on October 19, 2012. The presentation discusses using chemistry to solve the problem of used oil disposal, focusing on recycling used oil into biodiesel through transesterification. It outlines the chemical process of transesterification and how glycerin and biodiesel can be produced from used oil. The presentation promotes the 3 R's of reduce, reuse, recycle as the most positive solution and describes how biodiesel can be made in a school laboratory as an educational demonstration.
The document discusses the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) program implemented in the Valencian community of Spain. [1] It describes how the program aims to foster multilingualism through teaching some subjects in English in addition to Spanish and Valencian, the two official languages. [2] It provides details on the number of hours per week spent on CLIL and the balance between language and content teaching at different school levels. [3] It also notes that schools can choose which subjects to teach via CLIL, with the exception of languages and science in primary school.
Martina describes her positive experience with CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), where she learned biology and physics in English. At first, she and her classmates were nervous about using English for their science classes. However, over time they gained confidence and enjoyed learning new vocabulary through colorful slides, websites, and games. Martina found the mobility experiences abroad in Luxembourg and Spain particularly enriching, as she practiced her English skills, made new friends, and visited new places while staying with host families. Overall, CLIL brought something incredible to Martina's life and she hopes to have similar learning experiences again in the future.
CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. It is an approach where subjects are taught in a foreign language rather than the students' native language. This improves language skills while learning new content. There are many advantages to CLIL including introducing cultural contexts, improving language competencies, increasing motivation, and preparing students for future studies or careers.
CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teaching began in Italy through bilingual education programs in the Val d'Aosta region for Italian and French. The development of CLIL was later encouraged by education laws and ministerial projects in the 1990s and 2000s, which aimed to introduce the teaching of non-linguistic subjects through a foreign language. Currently, there are many ongoing CLIL programs in Italian schools, especially at the secondary level, where networks have been formed between schools and universities to conduct research and train teachers in CLIL methods.
CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teaching has a history in Italy. The autonomous region of Val d'Aosta promotes bilingual education in Italian and French according to its 1948 statute. This was designed to promote competence in the neighboring country's language and culture. Italian law has also encouraged CLIL teaching since 2002. There have been several ministerial projects implementing CLIL since the early 1990s. Current experiences focus on CLIL teaching in secondary schools, where networks have formed between schools and universities to conduct research and teacher training in various regions across Italy.
The document summarizes the results of an evaluation of a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) program from 2012. Students from Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, and Sweden were asked to rate their level of agreement with statements about an English language lesson on a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The statements addressed whether the lesson made English easier to understand, speak, read and write, whether it was more interesting taught in English, and whether students wanted more topics taught in English. Graphs show the responses for each country, with most students agreeing or strongly agreeing that the lesson helped with their English skills and found it more interesting taught in English.
Majda Sumic, a 17-year-old Swedish girl, participated in a CLIL project in Valencia, Spain where she took lessons taught in English by foreign teachers and worked with teenagers from other countries. She found the experience quite beneficial, improving her English confidence and learning about other cultures, especially Spanish culture since she stayed with a Spanish family. Majda felt the CLIL approach was very valuable as it not only improved her English but also allowed her to get to know people from abroad and realize how much she had in common with them.
This document provides an overview of resources on content and language integrated learning (CLIL). It summarizes the history and current state of CLIL in Europe, how to implement CLIL in the classroom, the role of the CLIL teacher, research that has been conducted on CLIL, and sources of good practice and support for CLIL teachers. The document contains links to various websites that provide more detailed information on these topics.
The student enjoyed participating in the Comenius exchange project in Valencia as it was their first exchange experience and they were able to meet people from other countries and form new relationships while gaining experience from traveling abroad. They learned the importance of speaking multiple languages and would gladly participate again as it provided a good life experience.
1. Sustainability and Ecosystems: Document 3
The End of plenty
by Joel K. Bourne Jr.
For the illustrated article, go to the following link:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text/1
For those that can’t manage access, here the text version:
The Global Food Crisis
The End of Plenty
By Joel K. Bourne Jr
It is the simplest, most natural of acts, akin to breathing and walking upright. We sit down at the
dinner table, pick up a fork, and take a juicy bite, oblivious to the double helping of global
ramifications on our plate. Our beef comes from Iowa, fed by Nebraska corn. Our grapes come
from Chile, our bananas from Honduras, our olive oil from Sicily, our apple juice—not from
Washington State but all the way from China. Modern society has relieved us of the burden of
growing, harvesting, even preparing our daily bread, in exchange for the burden of simply paying
for it. Only when prices rise do we take notice. And the consequences of our inattention are
profound.
Last year the skyrocketing cost of food was a wake-up call for the planet. Between 2005 and the
summer of 2008, the price of wheat and corn tripled, and the price of rice climbed fivefold,
spurring food riots in nearly two dozen countries and pushing 75 million more people into
poverty. But unlike previous shocks driven by short-term food shortages, this price spike came in
a year when the world's farmers reaped a record grain crop. This time, the high prices were a
symptom of a larger problem tugging at the strands of our worldwide food web, one that's not
going away anytime soon. Simply put: For most of the past decade, the world has been consuming
more food than it has been producing. After years of drawing down stockpiles, in 2007 the world
saw global carryover stocks fall to 61 days of global consumption, the second lowest on record.
2. "Agricultural productivity growth is only one to two percent a year," warned Joachim von Braun,
director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., at the
height of the crisis. "This is too low to meet population growth and increased demand."
High prices are the ultimate signal that demand is outstripping supply, that there is simply not
enough food to go around. Such agflation hits the poorest billion people on the planet the hardest,
since they typically spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food. Even though prices have
fallen with the imploding world economy, they are still near record highs, and the underlying
problems of low stockpiles, rising population, and flattening yield growth remain. Climate change
—with its hotter growing seasons and increasing water scarcity—is projected to reduce future
harvests in much of the world, raising the specter of what some scientists are now calling a
perpetual food crisis.
So what is a hot, crowded, and hungry world to do?
That's the question von Braun and his colleagues at the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research are wrestling with right now. This is the group of world-renowned
agricultural research centers that helped more than double the world's average yields of corn,
rice, and wheat between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s, an achievement so staggering it was
dubbed the green revolution. Yet with world population spiraling toward nine billion by mid-
century, these experts now say we need a repeat performance, doubling current food production
by 2030.
In other words, we need another green revolution. And we need it in half the time.
Ever since our ancestors gave up hunting and gathering for plowing and planting some 12,000
years ago, our numbers have marched in lockstep with our agricultural prowess. Each advance—
the domestication of animals, irrigation, wet rice production—led to a corresponding jump in
human population. Every time food supplies plateaued, population eventually leveled off. Early
Arab and Chinese writers noted the relationship between population and food resources, but it
wasn't until the end of the 18th century that a British scholar tried to explain the exact
mechanism linking the two—and became perhaps the most vilified social scientist in history.
Thomas Robert Malthus, the namesake of such terms as "Malthusian collapse" and "Malthusian
curse," was a mild-mannered mathematician, a clergyman—and, his critics would say, the
ultimate glass-half-empty kind of guy. When a few Enlightenment philosophers, giddy from the
success of the French Revolution, began predicting the continued unfettered improvement of the
3. human condition, Malthus cut them off at the knees. Human population, he observed, increases
at a geometric rate, doubling about every 25 years if unchecked, while agricultural production
increases arithmetically—much more slowly. Therein lay a biological trap that humanity could
never escape.
"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man," he wrote in his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. "This implies
a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence."
Malthus thought such checks could be voluntary, such as birth control, abstinence, or delayed
marriage—or involuntary, through the scourges of war, famine, and disease. He advocated against
food relief for all but the poorest of people, since he felt such aid encouraged more children to be
born into misery. That tough love earned him a nasty cameo in English literature from none other
than Charles Dickens. When Ebenezer Scrooge is asked to give alms for the poor in A Christmas
Carol, the heartless banker tells the do-gooders that the destitute should head for the workhouses
or prisons. And if they'd rather die than go there, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus
population."
The industrial revolution and plowing up of the English commons dramatically increased the
amount of food in England, sweeping Malthus into the dustbin of the Victorian era. But it was the
green revolution that truly made the reverend the laughingstock of modern economists. From
1950 to today the world has experienced the largest population growth in human history. After
Malthus's time, six billion people were added to the planet's dinner tables. Yet thanks to improved
methods of grain production, most of those people were fed. We'd finally shed Malthusian limits
for good.
Or so we thought.
On the 15th night of the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, 3,680 villagers, nearly all
with the surname "He," sat beneath a leaking tarp in the square of Yaotian, China, and dived into
a 13-course meal. The event was a traditional banquet in honor of their elders. Tureens of
steaming soup floated past, followed by rapidly dwindling platters of noodles, rice, fish, shrimp,
steamed vegetables, dim sum, duck, chicken, lily root, pigeon, black fungus, and pork cooked
more ways than I could count.
Even with the global recession, times are still relatively good in the southeastern province of
Guangdong, where Yaotian sits tucked between postage-stamp garden plots and block after block
of new factories that helped make the province one of the most prosperous in China. When times
4. are good, the Chinese eat pigs. Lots of pigs. Per capita pork consumption in the world's most
populous country went up 45 percent between 1993 and 2005, from 53 to 77 pounds a year.
An affable businessman in a pink-striped polo shirt, pork-industry consultant Shen Guangrong
remembers his father raising one pig each year, which was slaughtered at the Chinese New Year.
It would be their only meat for the year. The pigs Shen's father raised were pretty low
maintenance—hardy black-and-white varieties that would eat almost anything: food scraps, roots,
garbage. Not so China's modern pigs. After the deadly protests of Tiananmen Square in 1989,
which topped off a year of political unrest exacerbated by high food prices, the government
started offering tax incentives to large industrial farms to meet the growing demand. Shen was
assigned to work at one of China's first pig CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations, in
nearby Shenzhen. Such farms, which have proliferated in recent years, depend on breeds that are
fed high-tech mixtures of corn, soy meal, and supplements to keep them growing fast.
That's good news for the average pork-loving Chinese—who still eats only about 40 percent as
much meat as consumers in the U.S. But it's worrisome for the world's grain supplies. It's no
coincidence that as countries like China and India prosper and their people move up the food
ladder, demand for grain has increased. For as tasty as that sweet-and-sour pork may be, eating
meat is an incredibly inefficient way to feed oneself. It takes up to five times more grain to get the
equivalent amount of calories from eating pork as from simply eating grain itself—ten times if
we're talking about grain-fattened U.S. beef. As more grain has been diverted to livestock and to
the production of biofuels for cars, annual worldwide consumption of grain has risen from 815
million metric tons in 1960 to 2.16 billion in 2008. Since 2005, the mad rush to biofuels alone has
pushed grain-consumption growth from about 20 million tons annually to 50 million tons,
according to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.
Even China, the second largest corn-growing nation on the planet, can't grow enough grain to
feed all its pigs. Most of the shortfall is made up with imported soybeans from the U.S. or Brazil,
one of the few countries with the potential to expand its cropland—often by plowing up rain
forest. Increasing demand for food, feed, and biofuels has been a major driver of deforestation in
the tropics. Between 1980 and 2000 more than half of new cropland acreage in the tropics was
carved out of intact rain forests; Brazil alone increased its soybean acreage in Amazonia 10
percent a year from 1990 to 2005.
Some of those Brazilian soybeans may end up in the troughs of Guangzhou Lizhi Farms, the
largest CAFO in Guangdong Province. Tucked into a green valley just off a four-lane highway
that's still being built, some 60 white hog houses are scattered around large ponds, part of the
5. waste-treatment system for 100,000 hogs. The city of Guangzhou is also building a brand-new
meatpacking plant that will slaughter 5,000 head a day. By the time China has 1.5 billion people,
sometime in the next 20 years, some experts predict they'll need another 200 million hogs just to
keep up. And that's just China. World meat consumption is expected to double by 2050. That
means we're going to need a whole lot more grain.
This isn't the first time the world has stood at the brink of a food crisis—it's only the most recent
iteration. At 83, Gurcharan Singh Kalkat has lived long enough to remember one of the worst
famines of the 20th century. In 1943 as many as four million people died in the "Malthusian
correction" known as the Bengal Famine. For the following two decades, India had to import
millions of tons of grain to feed its people.
Then came the green revolution. In the mid-1960s, as India was struggling to feed its people
during yet another crippling drought, an American plant breeder named Norman Borlaug was
working with Indian researchers to bring his high-yielding wheat varieties to Punjab. The new
seeds were a godsend, says Kalkat, who was deputy director of agriculture for Punjab at the time.
By 1970, farmers had nearly tripled their production with the same amount of work. "We had a
big problem with what to do with the surplus," says Kalkat. "We closed schools one month early to
store the wheat crop in the buildings."
Borlaug was born in Iowa and saw his mission as spreading the high-yield farming methods that
had turned the American Midwest into the world's breadbasket to impoverished places
throughout the world. His new dwarf wheat varieties, with their short, stocky stems supporting
full, fat seed heads, were a startling breakthrough. They could produce grain like no other wheat
ever seen—as long as there was plenty of water and synthetic fertilizer and little competition from
weeds or insects. To that end, the Indian government subsidized canals, fertilizer, and the drilling
of tube wells for irrigation and gave farmers free electricity to pump the water. The new wheat
varieties quickly spread throughout Asia, changing the traditional farming practices of millions of
farmers, and were soon followed by new strains of "miracle" rice. The new crops matured faster
and enabled farmers to grow two crops a year instead of one. Today a double crop of wheat, rice,
or cotton is the norm in Punjab, which, with neighboring Haryana, recently supplied more than
90 percent of the wheat needed by grain-deficient states in India.
The green revolution Borlaug started had nothing to do with the eco-friendly green label in vogue
today. With its use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to nurture vast fields of the same crop, a
practice known as monoculture, this new method of industrial farming was the antithesis of
today's organic trend. Rather, William S. Gaud, then administrator of the U.S. Agency for
6. International Development, coined the phrase in 1968 to describe an alternative to Russia's red
revolution, in which workers, soldiers, and hungry peasants had rebelled violently against the
tsarist government. The more pacifying green revolution was such a staggering success that
Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.
Today, though, the miracle of the green revolution is over in Punjab: Yield growth has essentially
flattened since the mid-1990s. Overirrigation has led to steep drops in the water table, now
tapped by 1.3 million tube wells, while thousands of hectares of productive land have been lost to
salinization and waterlogged soils. Forty years of intensive irrigation, fertilization, and pesticides
have not been kind to the loamy gray fields of Punjab. Nor, in some cases, to the people
themselves.
In the dusty farming village of Bhuttiwala, home to some 6,000 people in the Muktsar district,
village elder Jagsir Singh, in flowing beard and cobalt turban, adds up the toll: "We've had 49
deaths due to cancer in the last four years," he says. "Most of them were young people. The water
is not good. It's poisonous, contaminated water. Yet people still drink it."
Walking through the narrow dirt lanes past pyramids of dried cow dung, Singh introduces
Amarjeet Kaur, a slender 40-year-old who for years drew the family's daily water from a hand
pump in their brick-hard compound. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Tej Kaur,
50, also has breast cancer. Her surgery, she says, wasn't nearly as painful as losing her seven-
year-old grandson to "blood cancer," or leukemia. Jagdev Singh is a sweet-faced 14-year-old boy
whose spine is slowly deteriorating. From his wheelchair, he is watching SpongeBob SquarePants
dubbed in Hindi as his father discusses his prognosis. "The doctors say he will not live to see 20,"
says Bhola Singh.
There's no proof these cancers were caused by pesticides. But researchers have found pesticides in
the Punjabi farmers' blood, their water table, their vegetables, even their wives' breast milk. So
many people take the train from the Malwa region to the cancer hospital in Bikaner that it's now
called the Cancer Express. The government is concerned enough to spend millions on reverse-
osmosis water-treatment plants for the worst affected villages.
If that weren't worrisome enough, the high cost of fertilizers and pesticides has plunged many
Punjabi farmers into debt. One study found more than 1,400 cases of farmer suicides in 93
villages between 1988 and 2006. Some groups put the total for the state as high as 40,000 to
60,000 suicides over that period. Many drank pesticides or hung themselves in their fields.
7. "The green revolution has brought us only downfall," says Jarnail Singh, a retired schoolteacher
in Jajjal village. "It ruined our soil, our environment, our water table. Used to be we had fairs in
villages where people would come together and have fun. Now we gather in medical centers. The
government has sacrificed the people of Punjab for grain."
Others, of course, see it differently. Rattan Lal, a noted soil scientist at Ohio State who graduated
from Punjab Agricultural University in 1963, believes it was the abuse—not the use—of green
revolution technologies that caused most of the problems. That includes the overuse of fertilizers,
pesticides, and irrigation and the removal of all crop residues from the fields, essentially strip-
mining soil nutrients. "I realize the problems of water quality and water withdrawal," says Lal.
"But it saved hundreds of millions of people. We paid a price in water, but the choice was to let
people die."
In terms of production, the benefits of the green revolution are hard to deny. India hasn't
experienced famine since Borlaug brought his seeds to town, while world grain production has
more than doubled. Some scientists credit increased rice yields alone with the existence of 700
million more people on the planet.
Many crop scientists and farmers believe the solution to our current food crisis lies in a second
green revolution, based largely on our newfound knowledge of the gene. Plant breeders now know
the sequence of nearly all of the 50,000 or so genes in corn and soybean plants and are using that
knowledge in ways that were unimaginable only four or five years ago, says Robert Fraley, chief
technology officer for the agricultural giant Monsanto. Fraley is convinced that genetic
modification, which allows breeders to bolster crops with beneficial traits from other species, will
lead to new varieties with higher yields, reduced fertilizer needs, and drought tolerance—the holy
grail for the past decade. He believes biotech will make it possible to double yields of Monsanto's
core crops of corn, cotton, and soybeans by 2030. "We're now poised to see probably the greatest
period of fundamental scientific advance in the history of agriculture."
Africa is the continent where Homo sapiens was born, and with its worn-out soils, fitful rain, and
rising population, it could very well offer a glimpse of our species' future. For numerous reasons—
lack of infrastructure, corruption, inaccessible markets—the green revolution never made it here.
Agricultural production per capita actually declined in sub-Saharan Africa between 1970 and
2000, while the population soared, leaving an average ten-million-ton annual food deficit. It's
now home to more than a quarter of the world's hungriest people.
8. Tiny, landlocked Malawi, dubbed the "warm heart of Africa" by a hopeful tourism industry, is also
in the hungry heart of Africa, a poster child for the continent's agricultural ills. Living in one of
the poorest and most densely populated countries in Africa, the majority of Malawians are corn
farmers who eke out a living on less than two dollars a day. In 2005 the rains failed once again in
Malawi, and more than a third of its population of 13 million required food aid to survive.
Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika declared he did not get elected to rule a nation of
beggars. After initially failing to persuade the World Bank and other donors to help subsidize
green revolution inputs, Bingu, as he's known here, decided to spend $58 million from the
country's own coffers to get hybrid seeds and fertilizers into the hands of poor farmers. The World
Bank eventually got on board and persuaded Bingu to target the subsidy to the poorest farmers.
About 1.3 million farm families received coupons that allowed them to buy three kilograms of
hybrid corn seed and two 50-kilogram bags of fertilizer at a third of the market price.
What happened next has been called the Malawi Miracle. Good seed and a little fertilizer—and the
return of soil-soaking rains—helped farmers reap bumper crops for the next two years. (Last
year's harvests, however, were slightly down.) The 2007 harvest was estimated to be 3.44 million
metric tons, a national record. "They went from a 44 percent deficit to an 18 percent surplus,
doubling their production," says Pedro Sanchez, the director of the Tropical Agriculture Program
at Columbia University who advised the Malawi government on the program. "The next year they
had a 53 percent surplus and exported maize to Zimbabwe. It was a dramatic change."
So dramatic, in fact, that it has led to an increasing awareness of the importance of agricultural
investment in reducing poverty and hunger in places like Malawi. In October 2007 the World
Bank issued a critical report, concluding that the agency, international donors, and African
governments had fallen short in helping Africa's poor farmers and had neglected investment in
agriculture for the previous 15 years. After decades of discouraging public investment in
agriculture and calling for market-based solutions that rarely materialized, institutions like the
World Bank have reversed course and pumped funds into agriculture over the past two years.
Malawi's subsidy program is part of a larger movement to bring the green revolution, at long last,
to Africa. Since 2006 the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have
ponied up nearly half a billion dollars to fund the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa,
focused primarily on bringing plant-breeding programs to African universities and enough
fertilizer to farmers' fields. Columbia's Sanchez, along with über-economist and poverty warrior
Jeffrey Sachs, is providing concrete examples of the benefits of such investment in 80 small
villages clustered into about a dozen "Millennium Villages" scattered in hunger hot spots
9. throughout Africa. With the help of a few rock stars and A-list actors, Sanchez and Sachs are
spending $300,000 a year on each small village. That's one-third as much per person as Malawi's
per capita GDP, leading many in the development community to wonder if such a program can be
sustained over the long haul.
Phelire Nkhoma, a small whipcord of a woman, is the agricultural extension officer for one of
Malawi's two Millennium Villages—actually seven villages with a total of 35,000 people. She
describes the program as we ride in a new UN pickup from her office in Zomba District through
fire-blackened fields dotted with the violet flush of jacaranda trees. Villagers get hybrid seeds and
fertilizers for free—as long as they donate three bags of corn at harvesttime to a school feeding
program. They get bed nets and antimalarial drugs. They get a clinic staffed with health workers,
a granary to store their harvests, and safe-drinking-water wells within a kilometer of each
household. Good primary schools, improved road systems, and connection to the power grid and
the Internet are on the way in these villages, and in the "Madonna" village, which is farther north.
"The Madonna?" I asked.
"Yes. I hear she's divorcing her latest husband. Is that true?"
Good times are apparent in the Millennium Village, where Nkhoma shows me new brick houses
topped with shiny corrugated-steel roofs, a grain bank full of seed and fertilizer, and beneath a
shade tree, a hundred or more villagers patiently listening to a banker explaining how they can
apply for an agricultural loan. Several are queued up at the teller window of an armored truck
from Opportunity International Bank of Malawi. Cosmas Chimwara, a 30-year-old cabbage seller,
is one of them. "The cabbage business is going well," he says. "I have three bikes, a TV and mobile
phone, and a better house."
Such stories warm the heart of Faison Tipoti, the village leader who was instrumental in bringing
the famous project here. "When Jeff Sachs came and asked, 'What do you want?' we said not
money, not flour, but give us fertilizer and hybrid seed, and he will do a good thing," says Tipoti in
a deep voice. No longer do villagers spend their days walking the road begging others for food to
feed children with swollen bellies and sickness. He gazes over to where several children are
frolicking as they wash clothes and gather water at the new village well. "With the coming of the
project, everywhere is clear, fresh water," Tipoti says.
But is a reprise of the green revolution—with the traditional package of synthetic fertilizers,
pesticides, and irrigation, supercharged by genetically engineered seeds—really the answer to the
10. world's food crisis? Last year a massive study called the "International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development" concluded that the immense production
increases brought about by science and technology in the past 30 years have failed to improve
food access for many of the world's poor. The six-year study, initiated by the World Bank and the
UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and involving some 400 agricultural experts from
around the globe, called for a paradigm shift in agriculture toward more sustainable and
ecologically friendly practices that would benefit the world's 900 million small farmers, not just
agribusiness.
The green revolution's legacy of tainted soil and depleted aquifers is one reason to look for new
strategies. So is what author and University of California, Berkeley, professor Michael Pollan calls
the Achilles heel of current green revolution methods: a dependence on fossil fuels. Natural gas,
for example, is a raw material for nitrogen fertilizers. "The only way you can have one farmer feed
140 Americans is with monocultures. And monocultures need lots of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers
and lots of fossil-fuel-based pesticides," Pollan says. "That only works in an era of cheap fossil
fuels, and that era is coming to an end. Moving anyone to a dependence on fossil fuels seems the
height of irresponsibility."
So far, genetic breakthroughs that would free green revolution crops from their heavy dependence
on irrigation and fertilizer have proved elusive. Engineering plants that can fix their own nitrogen
or are resistant to drought "has proven a lot harder than they thought," says Pollan. Monsanto's
Fraley predicts his company will have drought-tolerant corn in the U.S. market by 2012. But the
increased yields promised during drought years are only 6 to 10 percent above those of standard
drought-hammered crops.
And so a shift has already begun to small, underfunded projects scattered across Africa and Asia.
Some call it agroecology, others sustainable agriculture, but the underlying idea is revolutionary:
that we must stop focusing on simply maximizing grain yields at any cost and consider the
environmental and social impacts of food production. Vandana Shiva is a nuclear physicist turned
agroecologist who is India's harshest critic of the green revolution. "I call it monocultures of the
mind," she says. "They just look at yields of wheat and rice, but overall the food basket is going
down. There were 250 kinds of crops in Punjab before the green revolution." Shiva argues that
small-scale, biologically diverse farms can produce more food with fewer petroleum-based inputs.
Her research has shown that using compost instead of natural-gas-derived fertilizer increases
organic matter in the soil, sequestering carbon and holding moisture—two key advantages for
11. farmers facing climate change. "If you are talking about solving the food crisis, these are the
methods you need," adds Shiva.
In northern Malawi one project is getting many of the same results as the Millennium Villages
project, at a fraction of the cost. There are no hybrid corn seeds, free fertilizers, or new roads here
in the village of Ekwendeni. Instead the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities (SFHC) project
distributes legume seeds, recipes, and technical advice for growing nutritious crops like peanuts,
pigeon peas, and soybeans, which enrich the soil by fixing nitrogen while also enriching children's
diets. The program began in 2000 at Ekwendeni Hospital, where the staff was seeing high rates of
malnutrition. Research suggested the culprit was the corn monoculture that had left small
farmers with poor yields due to depleted soils and the high price of fertilizer.
The project's old pickup needs a push to get it going, but soon Boyd Zimba, the project's assistant
coordinator, and Zacharia Nkhonya, its food-security supervisor, are rattling down the road,
talking about what they see as the downside of the Malawi Miracle. "First, the fertilizer subsidy
cannot last long," says Nkhonya, a compact man with a quick smile. "Second, it doesn't go to
everyone. And third, it only comes once a year, while legumes are long-term—soils get improved
every year, unlike with fertilizers."
At the small village of Encongolweni, a group of two dozen SFHC farmers greet us with a song
about the dishes they make from soybeans and pigeon peas. We sit in their meetinghouse as if at
an old-time tent revival, as they testify about how planting legumes has changed their lives.
Ackim Mhone's story is typical. By incorporating legumes into his rotation, he's doubled his corn
yield on his small plot of land while cutting his fertilizer use in half. "That was enough to change
the life of my family," Mhone says, and to enable him to improve his house and buy livestock.
Later, Alice Sumphi, a 67-year-old farmer with a mischievous smile, dances in her plot of young
knee-high tomatoes, proudly pointing out that they bested those of the younger men. Canadian
researchers found that after eight years, the children of more than 7,000 families involved in the
project showed significant weight increases, making a pretty good case that soil health and
community health are connected in Malawi.
Which is why the project's research coordinator, Rachel Bezner Kerr, is alarmed that big-money
foundations are pushing for a new green revolution in Africa. "I find it deeply disturbing," she
says. "It's getting farmers to rely on expensive inputs produced from afar that are making money
for big companies rather than on agroecological methods for using local resources and skills. I
don't think that's the solution."
12. Regardless of which model prevails—agriculture as a diverse ecological art, as a high-tech
industry, or some combination of the two—the challenge of putting enough food in nine billion
mouths by 2050 is daunting. Two billion people already live in the driest parts of the globe, and
climate change is projected to slash yields in these regions even further. No matter how great
their yield potential, plants still need water to grow. And in the not too distant future, every year
could be a drought year for much of the globe.
New climate studies show that extreme heat waves, such as the one that withered crops and killed
thousands in western Europe in 2003, are very likely to become common in the tropics and
subtropics by century's end. Himalayan glaciers that now provide water for hundreds of millions
of people, livestock, and farmland in China and India are melting faster and could vanish
completely by 2035. In the worst-case scenario, yields for some grains could decline by 10 to 15
percent in South Asia by 2030. Projections for southern Africa are even more dire. In a region
already racked by water scarcity and food insecurity, the all-important corn harvest could drop by
30 percent—47 percent in the worst-case scenario. All the while the population clock keeps
ticking, with a net of 2.5 more mouths to feed born every second. That amounts to 4,500 more
mouths in the time it takes you to read this article.
Which leads us, inevitably, back to Malthus.
On a brisk fall day that has put color into the cheeks of the most die-hard Londoners, I visit the
British Library and check out the first edition of the book that still generates such heated debate.
Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population looks like an eighth-grade science primer. From
its strong, clear prose comes the voice of a humble parish priest who hoped, as much as anything,
to be proved wrong.
"People who say Malthus is wrong usually haven't read him," says Tim Dyson, a professor of
population studies at the London School of Economics. "He was not taking a view any different
than what Adam Smith took in the first volume of The Wealth of Nations. No one in their right
mind doubts the idea that populations have to live within their resource base. And that the
capacity of society to increase resources from that base is ultimately limited."
Though his essays emphasized "positive checks" on population from famine, disease, and war, his
"preventative checks" may have been more important. A growing workforce, Malthus explained,
depresses wages, which tends to make people delay marriage until they can better support a
family. Delaying marriage reduces fertility rates, creating an equally powerful check on
populations. It has now been shown that this is the basic mechanism that regulated population
13. growth in western Europe for some 300 years before the industrial revolution—a pretty good
record for any social scientist, says Dyson.
Yet when Britain recently issued a new 20-pound note, it put Adam Smith on the back, not T. R.
Malthus. He doesn't fit the ethos of the moment. We don't want to think about limits. But as we
approach nine billion people on the planet, all clamoring for the same opportunities, the same
lifestyles, the same hamburgers, we ignore them at our risk.
None of the great classical economists saw the industrial revolution coming, or the
transformation of economies and agriculture that it would bring about. The cheap, readily
available energy contained in coal—and later in other fossil fuels—unleashed the greatest increase
in food, personal wealth, and people the world has ever seen, enabling Earth's population to
increase sevenfold since Malthus's day. And yet hunger, famine, and malnutrition are with us still,
just as Malthus said they would be.
"Years ago I was working with a Chinese demographer," Dyson says. "One day he pointed out to
me the two Chinese characters above his office door that spelled the word 'population.' You had
the character for a person and the character for an open mouth. It really struck me. Ultimately
there has to be a balance between population and resources. And this notion that we can continue
to grow forever, well it's ridiculous."
Perhaps somewhere deep in his crypt in Bath Abbey, Malthus is quietly wagging a bony finger and
saying, "Told you so."