>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Mon, 15 Dec 97 15:54:15 CST
>From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Dangerous trends in food production threaten humanity
>Organization: ?
>Article: 24072
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> By DON HINRICHSEN
> 12/14/97
> (c) Earth Times News Service
>
> Despite the fact that the world grain harvest tripled between
> 1950 and 1990, keeping well ahead of population growth, it has tapered
> off dramatically in the last seven years. Even though grain yields
> continued to increase, the amount of grain area per person was
> declining, a reflection of population growth and loss of cropland to
> urban expansion, soil degradation and a number of other factors. In
> 1960, the devloping world averaged 0.32 hectares (0.8 acres) per
> person. By the mid-1990s that average had been whittled away to just
> 0.18 hectares (0.44 acres) and is expected to drop to 0.12 hectares
> (0.3 acres) by 2025.
>
> The world's population is now 5.8 billion, growing by over 80 million
> a year. The sixth billionth inhabitant of Earth will be born sometime
> during 1999. Most of this growth is concentrated in 82 low-income,
> food-deficit countries identified by the UN's Food and Agriculture
> Organization (FAO) as facing genuine threats to their ability to
> improve food security, particularly for their poorest citizens.
>
> Lester Brown, President of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC,
> is worried. "Both the area of cropland and the amount of irrigation
> water per person are shrinking," he points out, "threatening to drop
> below the level needed to provide minimal levels of food security."
>
> With some exceptions, most of the world is not headed in the direction
> of sustainable agriculture. The following trends fly in the face of
> optimistic prognoses propagated by experts such as Julian Simon.
>
> Arable land is very limited. Although FAO estimates that the amount of
> potentially arable land is 40 percent more than is currently put to
> the plow--an extra two billion hectares (five billion acres)--most of
> the uncultivated land is marginal, with poor soils and either too
> little rainfall or too much. Without massive soil enhancement measures
> or expensive irrigation, increases in food production will have to
> come from existing agricultural land.
>
> Land degradation is accelerating. Almost two billion hectares of crop
> and grazing land are suffering from moderate to severe soil
> degradation, an area larger than the United States and Mexico
> combined. Every year, some 25 billion metric tons of topsoil is
> stripped away from the world's farmland; five billion tons is lost in
> China alone. On an annual basis, soil erosion and other forms of land
> degradation now rob the world of five to seven million hectares of
> farming land. Globally, land degradation threatens the livelihoods of
> at least one billion people.
>
> Irrigated croplands are in trouble. Although only 17 percent of all
> cropland is under irrigation, these lands produce 37 percent of the
> world's total food supply. However, because of badly planned and
> poorly built irrigation systems, the yields on one half of all
> irrigated land--around 120 million hectares (300 million acres)--have
> fallen in recent years. There are two main reasons for this: salt
> buildup and waterlogging. FAO estimates that salt buildup in soil has
> severely damaged 30 million hectares (75 million acres), while a
> combination of salinization and waterlogging affect another 80 million
> hectares (200 million acres). Salinity has cut yields on almost
> one-quarter of China's irrigated land and 21 percent of Pakistan's.
>
> Water shortages and pollution. The world's irrigation crisis is
> ultimately a water crisis. As human populations grow, the amount of
> water available on a per-capita basis continues to shrink. In 1990,
> for instance, 28 countries containing 335 million people faced chronic
> water shortages or outright scarcity. By 2025, water shortages may
> plague up to 52 countries, affecting 3.2 billion people--40 percent of
> the projected global population.
>
> Fisheries collapsing. During the last three decades the reckless
> expansion of the world's fishing fleets, coupled with quantum leaps in
> fishing technologies and a dim understanding of fish population
> dynamics and ecosystem interactions, has led to the over-exploitation
> of almost every commercial fishery in the world's seas. By 1995,
> according to FAO, almost 70 percent of the world's marine fish stocks
> were either "fully to-heavily exploited, over-exploited, depleted or
> slowly recovering."
>
> Genetic diversity disappearing. Plant breeders are alarmed about the
> continuing genetic erosion of the Earth's wild strains of cereals and
> other cultivars. After 10,000 years of settled agriculture and the
> discovery of some 50,000 varieties of edible plants, a mere 15 provide
> 90 percent of the world's food energy intake. Just three of
> them--rice, corn and wheat- are the staple foods of four billion
> people. FAO estimates that since 1900, about three-quarters of the
> genetic diversity of domestic agricultural crops has been lost. If
> this trend is not reversed, by 2025, as many as 60,000 plant species,
> roughly 25 percent of the world's total, could be lost.
>
> In order to accommodate the eight billion people expected by 2025, the
> world will have to double food production over current levels. This
> not only requires another "green revolution"; it also necessitates a
> "blue revolution" in terms of water conservation and sustainable use.
>
> The bottom line is that food security cannot be achieved if two
> natural resources essential to agricultural production--land and
> water--continue to be increasingly degraded and polluted through
> over-exploitation and gross misuse. Steps must be taken soon to
> reverse this course before irreversible damage is done to the world's
> finite resource base.
>
> -----------------
>
> Don Hinrichsen is the author of a new Population Reports publication,
> "Winning the Food Race." Copies of the report can be ordered by
> contacting: Center for Communication Programs, Johns Hopkins
> University, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202.
>
> Low Graphics Directory Copyright 1997 The Earth Times All rights
> reserved.
>
>
>
Elinor Mosher
Paradise, Nova Scotia
Canada B0S 1R0
Here's freedom to him that wad read,
Here's freedom to him that wad write!
There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heard
But they wham the truth wad indite.
Robbie Burns
