Crop production

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Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations David R. Montgomery See book keywords and concepts

In his 1970 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Norman Borlaug, pioneering developer of the green revolution's high-yield rice, credited synthetic fertilizet production for the dramatic increases in crop production. "If the high-yielding dwarf wheat and rice varieties are the catalysts that have ignited the Gteen Revolution, then chemical fertilizer is the fuel that has powered its forward thrust.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet Mark Lynas See book keywords and concepts

With more plentiful rains, crop production can potentially increase, offsetting declines elsewhere - assuming, that is, that temperatures are not so high that people who once died from famine now die from heatstroke. However, computer modellers based in Princeton, New Jersey, have come up with a rather different long-range forecast. Their model accurately simulates the terrible 1970s and 1980s drought - but after a short interlude of higher rainfall, it projects even fiercer drought conditions for the Sahel region in the second half of the twenty-first century.

Indeed, the global pattern will see a generalised shift in crop production away from the tropics and towards the more temperate higher-latitude regions, where cooler, wetter climes still prevail. There may still be enough food in these more northerly areas, but this tropical temperature crunch spells disaster for hundreds of millions of people. As always, drought will play a key role. Agriculture in Africa's semi-arid tropics is largely rain-fed rather than based on irrigation, so is highly vulnerable to climatic shifts.

Even in Canada increases in cereal crop production in the Prairies will be limited by water availability. Where water is plentiful, however, Canadian corn and soybeans could see big jumps in yields. Potatoes and winter wheat would also benefit. According to a study looking at the US and Canada: 'The range over which major crops are planted could eventually shift hundreds of kilometres to the north.

In addition, none of the continent of Australia - except perhaps the extreme north and Tasmania - will be able to support significant crop production in the four-degree world because of heatwaves and declining rainfall. In India, precipitation is projected to increase in most areas because of a more intense summer monsoon, but with land temperatures soaring to 5°C or more above current levels, it will simply be too hot for most crops to survive. Moreover, faster evaporation in the hotter climate may actually make soils drier in many areas.

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations David R. Montgomery See book keywords and concepts

To sustain crop production, technologically driven increases in crop yields will have to double just to stay even. European teseatchets also report that organic farms are more efficient and less detrimental to soil fertility. A twenty-one-year comparison of crop yields and soil fertility showed that organic plots yielded about 20 percent less than plots cultivated using pesticide-and-fertilizer-intensive methods. However, the organic plots used a third to half the input of fertilizer and enetgy and virtually no pesticides.

The contemporaneous development of crop production and animal husbandry reinforced each other; both allowed more food to be produced. Sheep and cattle turn parts of plants we can't eat into milk and meat. Domesticated livestock not only added their labor to increase harvests, their manure helped replenish soil nutrients taken up by crops. The additional crops then fed more animals that produced more manure and led in turn to greater harvests that fed more people. Employing ox power, a single farmer could grow far more food than needed to feed a family.

Despite soil conservation practices promoted after the Dust Bowl, almost two hundred million acres of American farmland were marginalized or lost to crop production by the 1970s. After two centuries of independence, erosion had stripped away a third of the nation's topsoil. At this pace, we would run out of topsoil in less time than has passed since Columbus reached the New World. By the 1970s many soil conservation plans worked out over the previous decades were abandoned as government policies shifted to support more aggressive cultivation. U.S.

Although subsidy programs were originally intended to support struggling family farms and ensure a stable food supply, by the 1960s farm subsidies actively encoutaged larger farms and more intensive methods of crop production focused on growing single crops. U.S. commodity programs that favor wheat, corn, and cotton create incentives for farmers to buy up mote land and plant only those crops. In the 1970s and 1980s, subsidies represented almost a third of U.S. farm income. A tenth of the agricultural producers (coincidentally, the largest farms) now receive two-thirds of the subsidies.

Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown David Steinman See book keywords and concepts

In Mexico, chemicals banned in the United States are used for crop production, and I detailed the extensive contamination of Mexican produce with chemicals banned in the United States in Diet for a Poisoned Planet. Maria Cone reports in the Los Angeles Times most of these women were exposed to DDT through recent applications of the compound, noting that DDT was used on farms until 1995 and for mosquito control until 2000. DDT continues to be used worldwide today as protection against malaria.

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations David R. Montgomery See book keywords and concepts

The asrounding productivity of modern agriculture depends on the climate of these extensive areas of ideal agriculrural soils remaining favorable to crop production. The Canadian and American prairie is already marginal as agricultural land in its western extent. Yet global warming is predicted to increase the seventy of droughrs here in Norrh America's heartland enough to make that of the Dust Bowl era seem relatively mild. Given the projected doubling of humanity in this century, it is far from certain that the world's population will be able to feed itself.

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

However, these same energy problems will surely reduce crop production, which would lead to reduced food aid to desperate populations in poor nations, which would then lead to compromised immune systems and the migration of poor, hungry, and probably unhealthy people —and by "migration" I do not mean the orderly entry of people through airport lines, but rather the uncontrolled rush of desperate mobs, tribes, and whole ethnic groups from failing habitats into lands already occupied because they can better support human life. This is an obvious recipe for conflict and woe.

Health Update: McDonald's wrappers, antibiotics, freaky weather, creaky railroads and population control (satire) Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

People in the know are, of course, pointing to the obvious: Global warming. When you mess with the climate, the storms start becoming more severe and unpredictable. Before long, food production falls and you end up with skyrocketing prices at the grocery store. And while some areas are inundated with rain, others suffer severe droughts (like Australia right now).

Super Health 7 Golden Keys to Unlock Lifelong Vitality KC Craichy See book keywords and concepts

Although there seems to be a downward trend in biotech crop production and FDA approvals, it is still a significant concern. Most soy, cotton, and canola are genetically modified, in addition to half of the corn produced. GMO seeds and crops do not focus on nutrition, and even if added to the seed, may not be delivered properly into our bodies. A very real health concern related to eating these foods is whether or not the genetic manipulation of the seed will lead to increased risk of diseases, such as cancer or even disabling deformities.

Food, Inc. Mendel to Monsanto - The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest Peter Pringle See book keywords and concepts

Africa's crop production per unit area of land is the lowest in the world. The production of sweet potato, a staple crop, is less than half the global average. A single acre of farmland in Europe produces with added chemicals six times the cereal grain harvested from an acre in Africa. Pests and disease account for 30 percent of African yield losses. During colonial times, European powers established plantations to feed home markets, mostly with cash crops such as coffee. In postcolo-nial Africa, Western technology has not offered much help to the African farmer.

Herbal Drugs and Phytopharmaceuticals: A Handbook for Practice on a Scientific Basis Josef A. Brinckmann and Michael P. Lindenmaier See book keywords and concepts

The leaf is obtained as a by-product from the root crop production and is imported from eastern European countries. Constituents: 6—10% mucilage (swelling index, according to Ph. Eur., not less than 12) consisting of different polysaccharides, mainly galacturono-rhamnans with arabinogalactans and glucans [1—3]. Leaves with the highest Wording of the package insert German Standard License (St. Zul. 10th Suppl, Published July 1994) 6.

The Natural Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs Frantisek Stary See book keywords and concepts

Because this requires large quantities of raw material, large-scale commercial crop production is necessary. Demand can occasionally be met by collecting in the wild. The following are a few examples. Digoxin, the main ingredient of many preparations used in the treatment of heart disease, is obtained from the crude version of the drug, which is extracted from the fermented leaves of the Common Foxglove. Because digoxin is present in the crude drug in only tenths of one percent many tons of the substance must be processed to obtain the necessary quantities.

Conscious Eating Gabriel Cousens, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

These microorganisms can increase crop production two to ten times, help to revitalize soil, help to soften soil (especially hard desert soil like ours at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center), help remove fungus, algae, and other contaminants from the water, and even improve the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of human health. EM™ rejuvenates the planet, the people on it, animals, plants, water, and the soil on every level.

Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World Nelson Foster and Linda S. Cordell See book keywords and concepts

In South America, crop production in sedentary pottery-making villages began much earlier, perhaps 4,000 to 2,500 years ago. We may assume from studying the fields of their descendants that prehistoric Andean farmers grew more than just a few domesticated crops. They apparently encouraged or at least tolerated a variety of wild greens and semicultivated tubers in their fields, and sporadic outcrossing between wild and cultivated potatoes added to the genetic diversity found in that particular crop.

Staying Healthy with Nutrition: The Complete Guide to Diet and Nutritional Medicine Elson M. Haas, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

Local farmers observed that their vegetable growth and crop production were reduced. Cattle that grazed by the power lines showed lower milk production and more birth defects. In 1979, researchers Edward Leeper and Nancy Wertheimer reported increased cancer and leukemia rates in children who lived near high-voltage power lines. Other researchers in this country and Sweden have had similar findings. An increase in the incidence of brain tumors in electricians, electronic technicians, and utility linemen has also been shown.

Food Revolution: How your diet can help save your life and our world John Robbins See book keywords and concepts

In Central America, staple crop production has been replaced by cattle ranching, which now occupies two-thirds of the arable land. The World Bank encouraged this switch-over with an eye toward expanding U.S. fast-food and frozen-dinner markets. The resulting expansion of cattle ranching has deprived peasants of access to the land they depend on for growing food. And because of ranching's limited abilitv to create jobs (cattle ranching creates 13 times fewer jobs per acre than coffee production), rural hunger has soared. . . . What does all this have to do with our hamburgers?

Emerging Viruses: AIDS And Ebola : Nature, Accident or Intentional? Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H. See book keywords and concepts

The Project which is further described in Annex 1 shall identify major factors of environment and traditional crop production techniques, including transportation and marketing methods in the project area, which adversely affect Zaire's ability to achieve self-sufficiency in maize production, and attempt to develop new techniques, or to modify existing production techniques, so as to increase substantially maize yields.

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