The Food Chain: Mideast Facing Choice Between Crops and Water
By Andrew Martin
Published: July 21, 2008
CAIRO — Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North
Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more
crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant
supply of water. To read more...
Is there Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?
By Andrew Rice
November 16, 2009
Foreign investors —
some of them representing governments, some of them private interests —
are promising to construct infrastructure, bring new technologies,
create jobs and boost the productivity of underused land so that it not
only feeds overseas markets but also feeds more Africans. (More than a
third of the continent’s population is malnourished.) They’ve found
that impoverished governments are often only too welcoming, offering
land at giveaway prices. To read more...
Living with a Changing Water Environment
By Jerald L. Schnoor
Biofuels are not sustainable, at least not in the way we
practice row-crop agriculture today. Far too many nutrients run off the
land causing eutrophication of nearby waters, and far too much soil
erodes for biofuels to be considered sustainable in the long run. To read more...
Earth Is Parched Where Syrian Farms Thrived
The New York Times
By: Robert Worth
October 13, 2010
AR RAQQAH, Syria — The farmlands spreading north and east of this Euphrates River town were once the breadbasket of the region, a vast expanse of golden wheat fields and bucolic sheep herds.
Now, after four consecutive years of drought, this heartland of the Fertile Crescent — including much of neighboring Iraq — appears to be turning barren, climate scientists say. Ancient irrigation systems have collapsed, underground water sources have run dry and hundreds of villages have been abandoned as farmlands turn to cracked desert and grazing animals die off. Sandstorms have become far more common, and vast tent cities of dispossessed farmers and their families have risen up around the larger towns and cities of Syria and Iraq. To read more...
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