Taiwan Coasts

The pictures are from Yeh Liu, Taiwan. 

The coast is one formed by highly destructive waves. Look at the pictures to see the destructive power of the waves, and the beautiful features they formed. 

Highly destructive waves, hitting the cliffs that remain standing. 

The high erosive powers of the wave have shaped this coast, and signs are put up along the coast, with a red line, to warn people about the dangers. 

The famous Queen's head, a sedimentary rock feature shaped by the waves' erosive power. 

The new type of sea wall used to protect the coast from further erosion. 

A zoomed-in view of the seawall. 

Consider this: Why is it that this sea wall is not just a concrete wall, but made up of concrete pieces with such weird shapes? Think about the problems of a concrete wall along the coast, or the problems of the traditional seawall... 

Tiny island with a global warning

In the first of a series of reports, BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle analyses the state of food production and consumption across the globe.

The tiny Indian island of Ghoramara, in the delta where the River Ganges meets the Bay of Bengal, is a symbol of the crisis the world is facing as it struggles to feed a growing population.

It is a tiny place - just a few kilometres across - and it is getting tinier.

The island, part of a chain called the Sundarbans, was first settled by farmers in colonial times when the authorities decided to expand rice production to feed the multitudes in the city of Calcutta.

But when I visited Ghoramara there was powerful evidence that soil erosion caused in part by farming and the rising surrounding sea level caused by global warming were gradually making the island disappear.

Ajoy Kumar Patra, the headman on the island, stood on the shore looking across the broad choppy waters.

In the far distance a couple of kilometres away I could just make out another low-lying spit of land:

"This island and that piece of land over there used to be separated by just a narrow channel of water", says Mr Patra. "All the land which is now underwater used to be rice paddies".

Man-made problems

Dr Sugarto Hazra, an oceanographer at the University of Calcutta says there is more than one cause of the problem.

"Cutting down the mangrove that used to cover the island, to make way for farming, destroyed the ecology," he says. The mangrove used to bind the topsoil in position. Now it is being washed away.

The farmers also used to dig wells to get fresh water for irrigating their paddies. But in time, Dr Hazra says, underground reservoirs emptied and then collapsed.

Added to all that, "The sea level is rising around here, as it is everywhere in response to global warming", the oceanographer said. "So the land is subsiding and at the same time the sea is advancing."


The farmers of Ghoramara have tried to save their island by building dykes around the edges.


But Dr Hazra says this is just a short term solution that may make the situation worse.

"The problem with the dykes is that they stop the sediment the river would normally deposit here from nourishing the island's soil.

"The sediment is being washed out to sea rather than compensating for the rising water level."

So the agriculture designed to feed the community on the island is in fact contributing to its death.

'Tip-toeing into crisis'

Experts in food production say Ghoramara is a symbol of the dramatic combination of factors which mean the world is heading for extreme food shortages in the coming decades.

Similar phenomena are taking place on other islands and in low-lying coastal plains around the world.

The factors which are impacting on food production include soil erosion caused by intensive farming, and global warming which could reduce the yield of staple grains or make weather patterns less predictable for farmers.

The relatively new phenomenon of bio-fuels - for example, the production of ethanol from corn which can be used to supplement petrol - may take a huge proportion of the output of the big grain farms in the American Midwest.

"The global figures already show a drop in food stocks. We have got less buffer stocks than we have had for many, many decades," said Dr Tim Lang, a food and nutrition expert at The City University in London.

"We are tip-toeing into the most enormous crisis."

The over-consumption of food in many parts of the world is another issue. There are now more overweight people than chronically hungry, and the number of people with "diseases of the rich" like diabetes is increasing, including in developing countries.

Limits to growth?

On current United Nations projections, world population is set to increase from 6.6bn today to over 9bn by 2050.

"In terms of the basic cereals like rice, wheat and maize, we probably need 50-60%t more production by, say, 2030", warns Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

"And on meat production - pork, poultry and beef particularly - you really need a doubling."

In the next report in this series, I will be exploring the factors which may limit the big increases in staple food output that the world's expanding population will require.

I will be asking if, like the islanders on Ghoramara, we appear to have hit the buffers in terms of food production.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6495733.stm

Published: 2007/03/28 04:08:50 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Consider... how everything is interrelated in this world!
Global Warming and Intensive Farming is tied in with soil erosion, and this affects the amount of land left for farming.
To solve this, people built dykes. What impact did this have?

Why is it that the stockpiles that we have may not be enough? Consider how sea level rise, intensive farming and growing of crops for biofuels may worsen the situation of food supply.

Obesity fuelled by cheaper food

In the third of his series on global food markets, BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle gets into a 'Bod Pod' to investigate how modern eating habits are making many of us fat.

I regretted suggesting a visit to an obesity clinic almost as soon as the words had left my lips.

But my colleague, BBC producer Ed Butler, immediately seized upon it as an excellent way of illustrating the increasingly important issue of global obesity.

So I found myself at Addenbrooke's Hospital, in the east of England, in the company of Dr Nick Finer, a senior medical consultant on obesity.

Dr Finer told me to take my shoes off and clamber inside a sort of sealed air chamber called a 'Bod Pod'.

"You just climb in there, Mark, and I'll be able to measure how much of your body is fat."

I climbed in; the machine started whirring away.

It was around eight years ago that the number of overweight people in the world began exceeding the number of underweight people - many of them seriously undernourished.

The figures switched because, contrary to popular prejudice, it's not just Americans and Belgians who now tend to be fat.

Citizens of the developing world - from Mexico, for example, Egypt and South Africa - are also tipping the scales as overweight.

Poverty reduced

"Since the turn of the century," said Barry Popkin, Professor of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina, "we've seen big reductions in poverty, particularly in India and China."

"So we've had large reductions in the number of people who are underweight. At the same time we've had far faster increases in the numbers of those overweight."

“ ....between 1.3 billion and 1.6 billion are overweight ”
Professor Barry Popkin, University of North Carolina
"In every country in the world, the rate of increase in the number becoming overweight and obese has accelerated."

"So today we have reached a point where we have, depending on the estimates, between 1.3bn and 1.6bn overweight people in the world, but fewer, between 700m and 800m, who are underweight."

The reasons why more people than ever before are putting on weight are, on the face of it, simple enough; they eat too many fatty or sweet foods, and don't do enough exercise.

Least healthy

But behind that truism are several complex processes.

Barry Popkin says the way we have organised agriculture is a key factor:

"Over the past century we have worked very hard to produce cheap beef. The global price of beef has gone down to about a quarter of its cost in the 1950s.

"This makes it that much easier for poor people to consume beef, and the same has occurred for edible oils and sugars."

"These products are the least healthy in terms of producing diabetes, cancer and obesity."

In contrast to meat, oils and sugars, Professor Popkin concludes, "We have in global budgetary terms probably invested one thousandth of 1% in encouraging the consumption of fruit and vegetables."

Back at the controls of 'Bod Pod', Dr Nick Finer was doing calculations about my body mass. Since I know I am a little overweight I wasn't overly keen to get the results.

So I tried to distract him with some questions about why we often eat food that is not good for us.

Inappropriate messages

"In the past, when we were hunter-gatherers, our bodies were programmed to eat what we could when we could," said Dr Finer. "We needed to store food because we didn't know where the next meal would come from."

But now that agriculture has delivered plenty, the messages our brains give to our bodies may no longer be appropriate.

"The human brain is very good at telling us we are hungry and need food. But the problem now is that there is always plenty available and the brain is not so good at telling us we have had enough."

Pursuing my diversionary tactics further, I asked Dr Finer if that meant human beings were therefore predisposed to getting ever fatter and fatter.

"In a world of ever-expanding food supply", replied Dr Finer, "and where we don't expend enough energy through exercise, the answer to that is 'Yes'."

Then he told me my body was about 35% fat when it should, ideally, be between 25% and 28% fat. So there was no escaping my result.

And the world may not ultimately be able to escape the consequences of the patterns of consumption we have come to demand.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/6495889.stm

Published: 2007/03/31 08:22:41 GMT

© BBC MMIX


Thoughts:
What has affected the consumption patterns of the people in the developed and developing world?

What are the causes of obesity?

The Limits of Green Revolution

The limits of a Green Revolution?
In the second of his series, BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle analyses the state of food production across the globe.

On his farm just outside the Punjabi city of Ludhiana in northern India, Jagjit Singh Hara showed off his collection of old photos.

One of the farmer's most prized snaps is of him with the Norwegian-American agronomist Norman Borlaug, the man popularly known as The Father of the Green Revolution.

"Here we are when we were both young men," says Mr Singh Hara with smile.

"I said to him: 'Dr Borlaug, I want to put my hand in your pocket. But I don't want to take out the dollars, I want to take out the wheat seeds you have.'"

Punjab State, the breadbasket of India, is one of the places where the Green Revolution began. It more than doubled aggregate production here of wheat and rice.

India, a country that will probably soon overtake China as the most populous nation in the world, went from being a food-aid "basket case" to being largely self-sufficient in food.

The benefits - and costs - of the Green Revolution in India are reflected in other parts of the developing world.

In Punjab, I was looking for clues about whether output could be boosted further to cope with the rising demand that will be required to feed a world population set to rise from 6.6 billion today to more than nine billion people by 2050.

Food output across the world increased considerably in the last four decades of the 20th Century, largely as a result of the intensive farming techniques introduced by the Green Revolution.

The new techniques involved distributing hybrid grain seeds - mainly wheat, rice and corn. The hybrids grow with a shorter stalk. This maximises the process of photosynthesis, which nourishes the grain because less energy goes into the stem.

The hybrid seeds were combined with the intensive use of fertilisers and irrigation.

Population v Production

After successfully being introduced in India, the Green Revolution was rolled out in other parts of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. It was so successful in terms of production increases that it defied the gloomy Malthusian predictions of the 1960s, which said hundreds of millions would starve as population outstripped farm output.

The Revolution was a technological success.

"Before the 1960s, the population of India was multiplying like rats in a barn," said Jagjit Singh Hara, "but we didn't have the grain to feed them. After the Green Revolution, we doubled our yield and now we have proved that India can feed the world".

But the process has limits and they may have been reached. Population, on the other hand, has continued to rise in poor parts of the world.

The graph, compiled for the BBC by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, shows that while yield per hectare has increased, the amount of land used for the major staple grains has remained fairly constant; this is because the amount of good farmland is finite.

Given the shortage of land suitable for growing more food, the obvious answer would be a new Green Revolution, or another hike in yields. But this may not be possible.

"The difficulty is that we are now pressing against the photosynthetic limits of plants," says the influential environmentalist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in the United States.

Brown draws an analogy with human performance on the running track;

"In the first modern Olympics in 1896, we were running the mile in under five minutes. By 1954, Roger Bannister had broken the four-minute mile. But now, more than half a century later, no-one is talking about a three minute mile."

"Plants are not that different from people in this sense", says Brown "You can get gains up to a point and then it becomes much more difficult - I don't know of any scientists who are predicting potential advances in grain yields that are comparable with those we saw in the last half century".

There are other limits to the Green Revolution.

Some of the poorer villagers I spoke to in rural Punjab said they had fallen into debt as they were unable to keep up with the rising cost of the inputs - fertilisers, irrigation pumps and regular fresh supplies of seed - which intensive agriculture requires.

One elderly man in the village of Lehragaga, Jasram Singh, sat on an old iron bedstead in his yard and recounted the unbearable pain he had suffered when two of his sons had committed suicide. They had fallen into debt, been forced to sell their land, and felt irreconcilable shame.

A local community activist, Jagdish Papra, said the case was typical of many families who had seen loved ones kill themselves because they could not keep up with the financial cost of inputs.

"In the old days we practiced subsistence agriculture and we felt a sense of control," said Papra. "Now everything is more complicated and lots of people are desperately in debt."

Human cost

Amrita Chaudhry, an Agriculture Correspondent with The Indian Express newspaper, stood in a neat, almost manicured field of young green wheat;

"The balance sheet of the Green Revolution is that, yes, we are feeding the mouths. India no longer has to ask for food aid from other nations. But the fact is we are paying a very heavy price for agriculture at this present moment."

"Punjab is one of the biggest user of pesticides in India," Mr Chaudhry continued, "and they have leached into our subsoil water."

"There are health costs. We have had babies born blue because they are not breathing. Some of them have mental health problems. In the south-western belt, we have entire villages where each family has at least one or two cancer cases. All this is all because of this intensive agriculture that we have been doing."

In the final part of the series, I will be looking at how changing patterns of food consumption mean there are now more overweight people than hungry in the world.

Remember... what we said about Punjab State being an exporter of grain? Where were the grains exported to? What are the advantages and disadvantages of exporting the grain to (i) the farmer (ii) the country (iii) the people?

Look at the advantages and disadvantages of green revolution in India! This is a good case study to learn from, when we adopt technology.

To look at the graphs or to find related articles. Go to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6496585.stm

Feeding the world 3

Part Three: The Future Test

In the final part of our series, Mark Doyle investigates the potential consequences of environmental pressures and rising populations on the global food supply.

He also looks at another new challenge, the advent of Biofuels.

With most of this supposedly "green" fuel coming from crops that would otherwise go towards feeding people or livestock, some experts are anticipating a major supply crunch as the oil companies start to compete for agricultural land.

By some estimates, half of the US corn harvest could be diverted towards bioethanol distilleries within the next two years, causing global prices of grains to spiral, and leaving many food-importing regions like North Africa and the Middle East suddenly struggling for their staples.

What are the long-term solutions if we are to combat the upcoming challenges?

How does the growing of biofuel affect the supply of food?

To find out more: Go to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/6501077.stm
and download the podcast

Feeding the World Part 2

Feeding the World
First broadcast April 2007

Part Two: The Taste of Excess

Mark Doyle investigates the way we eat food and its effect on the global food supply.

The emergence of supermarkets and global supply chains has led to a far greater variety in the types and range of food available to most of us. But it's also, some say, distorted the market in the types of food we eat.


Today, sugars and meat are far cheaper than they were 50 years ago, and they are being heavily sold in the range of fast and processed foods that are widely available. Critics argue this has played a large part in the doubling over that past decade of overweight and obese people.

Furthermore, it has also promoted an appetite for food that is very inefficient to produce, and if as expected emerging economies like India and China start to demand the same meat-heavy diets consumed in the west, the global food supply may struggle to cope.

Thoughts:
Why are meat and meat-products inefficient to produce?
(Think about the food chain, and how energy is actually lost when the animals eat the plants, and how the animals have to eat more as a result. Think about how productive farms growing animals are, compared to growing of crops, in terms of the amount of land used and output.)

How have supermarkets and global supply chains affected the availability of food? Explain in detail.


To find out more: Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/6501075.stm
to download the podcast and listen!

Feeding the World 1: On the Green Revolution

BBC had a documentary on this a few years ago... The article is below.

Feeding the World
First broadcast March 2007
This BBC World Service series investigates the growing but often under-reported challenges facing the world's food supply.

Global Warming, soil erosion and a world population that is set to grow by a further two and half billion in the next 30 years, are just some of the pressures that could undermine the current state of relative abundance.

The BBC's World Affairs correspondent Mark Doyle assesses which outcome will prevail and the factors that will decide it. He discovers what policies need to be put in place now to ensure the world can feed itself in the future.

Part One: Growing Pains

The first programme in the series begins by charting the recent history of food production, the so-called "Green Revolution" of the 1960s and 70s, that transformed Asian and Latin American crop yields in particular.

Today in India some of the less-sustainable technologies that made that revolution possible, like heavy use of pesticides and deep-well irrigation, are beginning to take their toll.

According to the UN, India could soon become a net grain importer for the first time in decades, partly owing to its growing affluence and consumption patterns.

And with the increasingly apparent effects of climate change, and with global grain reserves at their lowest level in thirty years, some are suggesting that the world's food supply could be in for a shock - an event that could have consequences for us all.

Consider: What are the issues that we face with increase use of pesticides and irrigation? Why are they taking a toll? What are they taking a toll on?

Explain how India became a net grain importer? Explain how India's consumption patterns actually help India become a net grain importer!

How may climate change affect food supply? (Think about the temperatures, amount of rainfall, stability of rainfall patterns.)

To find out more: Go to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/6500041.stm
to download the podcast