Lester Brown
Lester Russel Brown, famous author of more than 50 books on the environment and founder of the Worldwatch Institute in the United States, urges us to become more aware of the many services forests offer the world. Although the usefulness of the world’s products is recognized, its other roles are often only measured after it has disappeared. According to Brown, the protection of forests—climate regulation, flood control, soil preservation, water quality improvement, storing and recycling of nutrients, sources of biodiversity—plays an essential role, both for the environment and for the economy.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a famous photographer. He has always had a passion for the animal world and the natural environment. In 1991 he founded Altitude, the world’s first aerial photography agency...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
Jeffrey David Sachs (United States): Distinguished American economist. Mr Sachs is Director of the Earth Institute, as well as a professor of sustainable development and health policy and management...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
L’International Institute for Environment and Development (iied) a été fondé en 1971. Cette organisation internationale non-lucrative conduit des activités de recherches et de lobbying sur les grands...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
Juliet Torome, a writer and documentary film-maker, was awarded Cine-source Magazine’s first annual Flaherty documentary award.
Silvia Ribeiro et Kathy Jo Wetter travaillent toutes deux en tant que chercheuses pour l'Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group).
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
The Science and Development Network is a not-for-profit organization in the United Kingdom recognized for its educational charity. Its mission is to help economic players in developing countries to...
This professor of molecular biology also chairs the scientific board of CRII-GEN (Comité de Recherche et d'Information Indépendantes sur le génie Génétique), the main independent laboratory on GMO in...
Nature et Progrès (Nature & Progress) (is a bimonthly magazine, created in 1964. Every two months, the journal evaluates current events in agriculture and biological food. Provides reporting,...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
With a degree in botanicals from the University of North Wales, he returned to Ethiopia where, since 1970, Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre EGZIABHER has directed the Biology Department at the University of...
Lester Russel Brown, famous author of more than 50 books on the environment and founder of the Worldwatch Institute in the United States, urges us to become more aware of the many services forests...
A farmer in the1960s, Pierre Rabhi confronted very early on the problem of intensive agriculture and was appalled by the impacts of this practice on ecosystems. In the 1960s, he decided to develop,...
Feeding 7 billion well
31/08/2008 1:53 pm
In April 2005, the World Food Programme and the Chinese government jointly announced that food aid shipments to China would stop after the end of the year. For a country where hundreds of millions of people were chronically hungry a generation ago, this was a landmark achievement. China’s success in largely eradicating hunger can be traced to the wholesale reduction in poverty associated with the eightfold expansion in its economy since the economic reforms of 1978 and the 50-percent jump in its grain harvest between 1977 and 1986. (1)
While hunger has been disappearing in China, it has been spreading in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, the number of people who are hungry has increased from a recent historical low of 820 million in 2000 to 852 million in 2002. (2)
One key to the threefold expansion in the world grain harvest since 1950 was the rapid adoption in developing countries of high-yielding wheats and rices developed in Japan and hybrid corn from the United States. The spread of these highly productive seeds, combined with a tripling of irrigated area and a ninefold increase in world fertilizer use, tripled the world grain harvest. Growth in irrigation and fertilizer use essentially removed soil moisture and nutrient constraints on crop yields in much of the world. (3)
But now the world’s farmers face enormous additional demand for farm products from the projected addition of some 70 million people a year, the desire by some 5 billion people to consume more livestock products, and the potential of millions of motorists turning to farm-produced fuel crops to supplement tightening supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel. On the supply side, farmers are faced with shrinking supplies of irrigation water, rising temperatures, the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, rising fuel costs, and a dwindling backlog of yield-raising technologies. For those who like to be challenged, this is a good time to be a farmer or an agronomist. (4)
ENDNOTES:
1. “Last Food Shipment Signals End of 25-Year WFP Aid to China,” Asian Economic News, 8 April 2005; U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Production, Supply, & Distribution, electronic database, updated 13 July 2005.
2. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004 (Rome: 2004), p. 6.
3. Thomas R. Sinclair, “Limits to Crop Yield,” paper presented at the 1999 National Academy Colloquium, Plants and Populations: Is There Time? Irvine, CA, 5–6 December 1998; FAO, FAOSTAT Statistics Database, with fertilizer use data updated 4 April 2005.
4. United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision (New York: 2005).
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, Norton & Co., 2006
]
Signaler un abus
