Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

VERTICAL FARMING

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

By Gioietta Kuo

Senior fellow, American Center for International Policy Studies amcips.org

Nov 1 2009

Recently, UN Convention to Combat Decertification meeting in Argentina has issued a warning that drought could parch close to 70% of the planet’s soil by 2025. Currently drought is already affecting at least 41% of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25% just since 1990.

As we know, there is a global crisis in food and water. Our civilization is being squeezed (more…)

Future Of World’s Food Security

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

by Gioietta Kuo July 21 2008
Senior Fellow, American Center for international Policy Studies,  amcips.org

In a new book by Lester Brown: “ Ourgrowing The Earth, the food challenge in an age of falling water tables and rising temperatures”,  he makes the point that  as our population increases and our economy grows, our demand on the earth are growing, exceeding many of planets natural resources to provide food, water and other basic needs for us.  Evidence of these excessive demands are everywhere: collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, rising CO2 levels, eroding soils, rising temperatures, falling water tables, melting glaciers, deteriotrating grasslands, rising seas and river running dry.  In fact nearly all these environmental trends affect world’s food supply.

Indeed, we are reaching the limit of what we can draw from our planet.

In recent days, much talk has been concentrated on the shortage of oil and our energy security.   Although  energy is very important to us,  there are in fact much greater phenomena happening right in front of our eyes that will affect us even more – that is (more…)

Cuba and Haiti: The Alternative Fuel Mixture

Monday, May 12th, 2008

There is now a movement away from alternative fuels, mainly due to the shortage and high price of food products, such as corn, that is also used to make ethanol. Other arguments against ethanol are that it may be costlier to make than the current cost to refine crude oil. The Morning News,(by Aoife White, The Associated Press) May 6, 2008 edition, carried an article titled “Economist Pushes For Biofuel Cuts” stating that “The U.S. and European Union should reconsider a shift to biofuel that has helped increase food prices world-wide by turning agricultural land over to energy crops, American economist Jeffrey Sachs said Monday.” There are also those who say the shortage of oil is due in part, to the lack of refineries, and many in the United States do not want to have refineries located near their cities or finance the upfront investment for construction which is very expensive.

Another article regarding the use of agricultural land was published in The Morning News by Seth Borenstein of The Associated Press, May 11, 2008, titled “Experts: Better Soil Needed.” The article discussed the new plant seeds which were formulated to produce healthier crops, are now having difficulty producing in degraded (more…)

World Population Explosion

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

This article was translated into Chinese and published on Oct 8 2007 in People’s Daily , the official organ of the Chinese government.

 

Our planet is too small for 6,500,000,000 people.

 

Recent warning by United nation Population Programme (UNPP) is that the world is adding one billion more people every 12-13 years.  The forecast is that from the present 6.5 billion today, it will reach 7.6 billion by 2020, 8.2 billion by 2030 and an alarming 9.0 billion by 2050.

 

There is a vast difference between the growth of population and the growth of food supply to feed the population.  The way population grows is called ‘exponential’.  That means the number of births at any time depends on the number of people present.  A couple can produce 10 children and each child can produce 10 more. So in a short space of 2 generations – 40 years, there could be 100 more people on earth.

 

The growth of food, however, can only increase linearly if at all.  For example, genetically altered (more…)

Death of the Family Farm

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

On January 31, 2008 tens of thousands of Mexican farmers marched in the streets of Mexico City to protest (more…)