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One year in 40 seconds: Coniferous Forest

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One year in 40 seconds: Coniferous Forest

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The ground or , water or hydro-sphere, air or atmo-sphere, and life or : Earth and everything on it can be organized into these four distinct yet interconnected subsystems. Knowing more about each of them can help us better understand how they can interact or balance each other out, and how our home planet functions as a whole.

In these two episodes of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina Cruz explains what's contained in each one. Above, Four Spheres Part 1 (Geo and Bio), and below, Part 2 (Hydro and Atmo):

And by the way, you don't have to be a kid to learn a little something from this information-packed, adorably-animated educational series. Watch more Crash Course Kids, including Gotta Eat! and Feed Me: Classifying Organisms.

Related: Everything You Need to Know About Planet Earth.

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The Four Spheres (Geo, Bio, Hydro, & Atmo) with Crash Course Kids

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The ground or geo-sphere, water or hydro-sphere, air or atmo-sphere, and life or bio-sphere: Earth and everything on it can be organized into these four

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A YouTube video that shares information about the world's major aquatic and terrestrial biomes.

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Some Facts about Our planet

Earth is the third planet, and 93,000,000 miles (150,000,000 km.) from the sun. It is estimated to be over 4.5 billion years old.

The planet rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds. It makes one full revolution around the sun every 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.45 seconds. Earth's axis is tilted at a 23.5° angle.

Earth has a total surface area of 196,800,000 square miles. Approximately 57,300,000 square miles, or 29% of the total surface area is land. Water covers approximately 139,500,000 square miles, or 71% of the total surface area.

The highest temperatures on Earth have reached 136° F (58° C) at Al Asisiyah, Libya. Temperatures of - 128° F (-89° C) have been recorded at Vostok station in Antarctica.

The atmosphere is a thin, gaseous layer of air that envelops the planet. Its inner layer is called the troposphere and reaches only 11 miles above sea level. It contains most of the planet's air, which consists of nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). The stratosphere, or outer layer, stretches 11-30 miles above sea level and contains ozone (O3). Ozone filters out most of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation.

More than 99% of earth's atmosphere is less than 50 miles (80 km.) high. However, particles of the atmosphere are found 1,000 miles (1,600 km.) in space above the planet's surface.

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Earth is the third planet, and 93,000,000 miles (150,000,000 km.) from the sun. It is estimated to be over 4.5 billion years old. The planet rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds. It makes one full revolution around the sun every 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.45 seconds.

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Encyclopedia.com               Biomes overview

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Encyclopedia.com               Biomes overview

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BIOMES CONCEPT On a political map of the world, Earth [1] is divided into countries, of which there are almost 200. But nature, of course, knows no national boundaries, and therefore the natural divisions of the planet are quite different from those agreed upon by humans.

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Pyramids don't occur naturally (1). But this strange pyramid maps a lot of things that do. They're called biomes, and they are arranged pyramidally to show where, why and how they occur.

A biome is a biological community of flora and fauna that has formed in response to a certain climate type. Add 'em all up, and you have a biosphere - our biosphere. As indicated below and to the right of the pyramid, the two main determinants for each biome are temperature (hot/cold) and moisture (wet/dry).

The temperature factor has to do with a biome's longitudinal location: hotter near the equator, colder near the poles (and also with its altitude: higher means colder). The moisture factor has the greatest impact on biome diversity near the equator, least near the poles - hence the diminishing area of each pyramid level towards the top.

This pyramid is an abstract rendition of either half of the globe: the same biomes can occur in both the northern and southern hemispheres. One could argue that a 'southern' pyramid would have to be inversed.

Tundra, at the top of this (northern-hemisphere) pyramid, derives from Russian (but ultimately Sami) and originally described zones in the extreme north of Russia where temperatures were too low and growing seasons too short for trees to grow. But the same treeless plains also occur in Kerguelen (see also # 519), close to the South Pole.

The next level of the pyramid is occupied by boreal forests, also known as taiga (loaned by Russian from Yakut, where it means 'impassable forest'). These vast forests of pines, spruces and other coniferous trees constitute the world's largest biome (if we leave aside the oceans). They cover much of Scandinavia and Russia, Alaska and Canada.

There are also boreal forests in the Scottish Highlands, northern Mongolia and Hokkaido (see also # 777). There is, however, no boreal forest in the southern hemisphere. Scientists speculate this is because there is not enough land mass in the southern hemisphere far enough from the sea for the climate to be cold enough for this type of biome.

Although all trees on this level of the pyramid are covered by the same definition ('boreal forest'), the ones on the left look visibly taller than their stunted cousins on the right - a foreshadowing of the effect that the difference in moisture will have on the next level of vegetation. These are the temperate regions, and here we have no less than four different biomes. The temperate forests are well-watered, the grasslands less so, the high chaparral even less and the desert least of all.

The discrepancy is widest in the tropical regions: on the one hand, the lushness of tropical forests, on the other, the deadly environment of the tropical desert. In between, the grasslands, where life is hard and trees are rare. And to make matters even worse, there's a giant pyramid hovering menacingly overhead.
Map, originally from a biology textbook by W.W. Norton & Co., found here at CookLowery16 Strange Maps #859 Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com. .
(1) One counter-example: the so-called Bosnian Pyramids. Although they came to prominence because a local amateur archaeologist claimed they were relics of a lost civilisation, it appears these intriguingly symmetrical hills near Sarajevo are natural in origin.

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Pyramids don't occur naturally (1). But this strange pyramid maps a lot of things that do. They're called biomes, and they are arranged pyramidally to show where, why and how they occur. A biome is a biological community of flora and fauna that has formed in response to a certain climate type.

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Pg 74 - Modification of biomes by humans for use in agriculture, etc.

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Human impact on the tundra is changing the environment, from waste heat melting the permafrost under the soil, to oil spills and changes in drainage patterns from building roads in the area. Other impacts include long-term climate change. One concern is that a rise in global temperatures could easily release a lot of stored methane and carbon dioxide under the permafrost.

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Tropical Rainforests: America's Medicine Cabinet

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Tropical Rainforests: America's Medicine Cabinet

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Tropical rainforests, which account for only seven percent of the world's total land mass, harbor as much as half of all known varieties of plants. Experts say that just a four-square-mile area of rainforest may contain as many as 1,500 different types of flowering plants and 750 species of trees, all which have evolved specialized survival mechanisms over the millennia that mankind is just starting to learn how to appropriate for its own purposes.

Scattered pockets of native peoples around the world have known about the healing properties of rainforest plants for centuries and perhaps longer. But only since World War II has the modern world begun to take notice, and scores of drug companies today work in tandem with conservationists, native groups and various governments to find and catalog rainforest plants for their medicinal value, and synthesize their bio-active compounds.

Some 120 prescription drugs sold worldwide today are derived directly from rainforest plants. And according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, more than two-thirds of all medicines found to have cancer-fighting properties come from rainforest plants. Examples abound. Ingredients obtained and synthesized from a now-extinct periwinkle plant found only in Madagascar (until deforestation wiped it out) have increased the chances of survival for children with leukemia from 20 percent to 80 percent.

Some of the compounds in rainforest plants are also used to treat malaria, heart disease, bronchitis, hypertension, rheumatism, diabetes, muscle tension, arthritis, glaucoma, dysentery and tuberculosis, among other health problems. And many commercially available anesthetics, enzymes, hormones, laxatives, cough mixtures, antibiotics and antiseptics are also derived from rainforest plants and herbs.

Despite these success stories, less than one percent of the plants in the world's tropical rainforests have even been tested for their medicinal properties. Environmentalists and health care advocates alike are keen to protect the world's remaining rainforests as storehouses for the medicines of the future. Fueled by this urgency, pharmaceutical companies have entered agreements with tropical countries promising protection against exclusive "bioprospection" rights.

Unfortunately, these agreements didn't last, and enthusiasm waned. In some countries, bureaucracy, permits, and access became prohibitively expensive. In addition, new technologies allowed to use powerful combinatorial chemistry techniques to find active molecules without having to slog through the mud in some faraway jungle. As a result, the exploratory search for pharmaceuticals in rainforests dwindled for a while.

But the technological advancements which favored synthetic, lab-developed meds are now helping botanical prospectors once again, and a few daring pharmaceutical companies are back in the jungles looking for the next big drug.

But saving tropical rainforests is no easy task, as poverty-stricken native people try to eke out a living off the lands and many governments throughout the world's equatorial regions, out of economic desperation as well as greed, allow destructive cattle ranching, farming, and logging. As rainforest turns to farm, ranch and clear-cut, some 137 rainforest-dwelling species-plants and animals alike-go extinct every single day, according to noted Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson. Conservationists worry that as rainforest species disappear, so will many possible cures for life-threatening diseases.

How You Can Help Save Rainforests--and Human Lives
EarthTalk is a regular feature of E/The Environmental Magazine. Selected EarthTalk columns are reprinted on About Environmental Issues by permission of the editors of E.

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Tropical Rainforests: Nature's Medicine Cabinet

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Tropical rainforests, which account for only seven percent of the world's total land mass, harbor as much as half of all known varieties of plants. Experts say that just a four-square-mile area of rainforest may contain as many as 1,500 different types of flowering plants and 750 species of trees, all which have evolved specialized survival mechanisms over the millennia that mankind is just starting to learn how to appropriate for its own purposes.

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Impact of Climate Change on the World's ecosystems

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Impact of Climate Change on the World's ecosystems

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If nations fail to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions, nearly every terrestrial ecosystem on the planet - from forests to grasslands to marshland -will undergo "major transformations" that will completely change the world's biomes, warn a team of 42 scientists from around the globe in the journal Science. This will have consequences for everything from food and water security to public health.

"If we allow climate change to go unchecked, the vegetation of this planet is going to look completely different than it does today, and that means a huge risk to the diversity of the planet," Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan and co-author of the new study, said in a statement. "We're talking about global landscape change that is ubiquitous and dramatic. We're already starting to see it in the United States, as well as around the globe."

The researchers, led by geoscientist Connor Nolan of the University of Arizona, examined fossilized evidence from nearly 600 locations around the world of how ecosystems changed at the end of the last deglaciation, a period that started about 21,000 years ago and saw warming of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius (7 to 13 degrees Fahrenheit) - comparable to the 4 to 5 degrees C of warming scientists project will occur over the next century or two.

The changes seen during the last deglaciation provide "a conservative estimate of the extent of ecological transformation to which the planet will be committed under future climate scenarios," the authors wrote.

If emissions continue to rise unabated, the scientists concluded, the probably of large-scale vegetative changes is greater than 60 percent. If nations succeed in meeting their 2015 Paris Agreement greenhouse gas mitigation pledges, the probability of large-scale ecological transformations is less than 45 percent.

"We're talking about the same amount of change in 10-to-20 thousand years that's going to be crammed into a century or two," Stephen T. Jackson, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Southwest Climate Adaptation Center and co-author of the new study, said in a statement. "Ecosystems are going to be scrambling to catch up."

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Nearly Every Ecosystem on the Planet Will Be Transformed By Climate Change

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If nations fail to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions, nearly every terrestrial ecosystem on the planet - from forests to grasslands to marshland -will undergo "major transformations" that will completely change the world's biomes, warn a team of 42 scientists from around the globe in the journal Science .

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Effects of Climate Change | Threats | WWF

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Sea levels are rising and oceans are becoming warmer. Longer, more intense droughts threaten crops, wildlife and freshwater supplies. From polar bears in the Arctic to marine turtles off the coast of Africa, our planet’s diversity of life is at risk from the changing climate.
Climate change poses a…

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What If All The Ice Melted On Earth? ft. Bill Nye

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Climate Change is a real and serious issue. In this video Bill Nye, the Science Guy, explains what causes climate change, how it affects our planet, why we need to act promptly to mitigate its effects, and how each of us can contribute to a solution.

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Seen from a satellite, an industrial feedlot has a sort of abstract beauty. The washes of colors, the juxtaposition of organic and rigid geometries, initially obscure the subject. Then comes the realization: That's where our food comes from.

Such is the power of " Feedlots," a new series of images crafted by British artist Mishka Henner from publicly available satellite photographs. Henner does work with the photos, enhancing the colors - the waste lagoons above, for example, are flat green rather than bright - but the physical details are unaltered.

Henner, who noticed the feedlots while scanning for pictures of oil fields in Texas, didn't at first realize what he was looking at. Factory farms exist in the United Kingdom, but not at landscape scales.

Even for Americans, though, these sights are unusual. Industrial farming, especially of animals, tends to be hidden from public view - and under so-called ag-gag laws, that secrecy could become law.

The laws, so far enacted by Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa and Missouri, make it illegal to take undercover photos or videos on farms. Some proposed ag-gag laws would also cover zoos and puppy mills, and would officially label anyone who breaks them as a terrorist.

How might images like Henner's be affected by ag-gag laws? It's not clear, said Matthew Liebman, an attorney with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, an animal advocacy group. Texas has no such law, so Henner's images are safe. In states that do, they could be protected by legal recognition of satellite-level altitudes as public space. Under some proposed laws, though, gathering any imagery without farmer consent is a crime. Taking a snapshot of a feedlot from a window seat in a commercial jetliner would technically be illegal.

Public opinion may be turning against ag-gag laws. Of 11 proposed in state legislatures this year, each was either defeated or tabled until the next legislative session. Utah's law is being challenged as unconstitutional. "Something's wrong in the Land of the Free when the act of looking is itself being condemned and punished," said Henner.

Henner's work is currently on display at the McCord Museum in Montreal. On these pages are the rest of his photos from "Feedlots."
Images: Courtesy of Mishka Henner

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Factory Food From Above: Satellite Images of Industrial Farms

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Seen from a satellite, an industrial feedlot has a sort of abstract beauty. The juxtaposition of dull and bright colors, of organic and rigid geometries, initially obscure the subject. Then comes the realization: that's where our food comes from.

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Tropical Desert:
1. If water is not supplied in enough abundance to flow off the land and carry away salts then those salts will build up, leading to salinization of the soil, and its eventual abandonment as salt levels become too high to support plants.
2. Because the grazing animals are often placed on the land for a short time, or because their food and water may be supplemented, grazing
animals are often placed in deserts at far greater frequencies than the land would normally support. The high level of grazing can destroy or alter native plant communities, and the grazing animals themselves can trample and kill an assortment of desert plants and animals.

Tropical Grassland:
1. Development of urban areas is increasingly cutting into grassland habitat.
2. Continued global warming could turn current marginal grasslands into deserts
as rainfall patterns change.

Tropical Rainforest:
1. Many of the fastest-growing human populations are located in the tropics, and as they clear land for sustenance farming there is a
direct impact on the rainforest.
2. Logging is also a threat; many of the tropical trees are prized for their lumber (and some are just ground up to make toilet
paper).

Temperate Desert:
1. Vehicles disrupt the desert pavement and varnish, leaving the soil underneath open to wind erosion.
2. Global warming is also a potential threat; it's hard to imagine that a slightly warmer desert would be any worse than some of the hot deserts now. However, even small changes in temperature or precipitation may have extensive impacts on desert communities.

Temperate Grassland:
1. Sustained heavy grazing by domestick stock, like sheep, and feral animals, like rabbits, leads to the loss of many plant and animal species; and soil compaction by the former.
2. Also, they have all been over-exploited by people through the persuits of agricultural production and infrastructure development.

Temperate Forest:
1. The burning of fossil fuels releases sulfur and nitrogen into the atmosphere. Transported by the wind this can fall to earth as dry deposits or combine with water to form "acid rain".
2. Fires started by people consume an average of one per cent of the existing Mediterranean forest every year.

Temperate Rainforest:
1. With forests elsewhere already cut, there is tremendous pressure to log in temperate rainforests. Thus, timber cutting is the number
one threat to these forests.
2. A lot of criticism is leveled at 3rd world countries who allow their forests to be logged without regulation; Canada, a 1rts world country has also come under criticism for this.

Tundra:
1. There are many natural resources located in or under the tundra such as natural gas and oil. People drill for these resources which can disturb or pose a threat to the wildlife.
2. Also, the overpopulation of Canadian geese pose a threat to the balance of the tundra.

Taiga:
1. The human threats to taiga are things like pollution caused by passing coal and oil powered boats, expansion of cities and towns and populations, oil spills caused by tankers
hitting icebergs or poorly maintained engines and storage containers.
2. Another threat is mines and lumber mills in order to get lumber you need to chop down trees in massive amounts due to the consuming rate
of lumber and paper.

Chaparral:
1. Development of this natural area happens to be the biggest threat the Chaparral.
2. Another big threat to the chaparral biome is pollution, especially in the California area.

Salt Water:
1. If a large ship spills oil, animals, land, and water are all affected by this spill.
2. Also, pollution is another factor when talking about human influences and concerns to the marine biome.

Fresh Water:
1. The creation of dams and water-diversion systems blocks migration routes for fish and disrupts habitats
2. Also, runoff from agricultural and urban areas hurts water quality.

Estuary:
1. The main threat to estuaries is urban and agricultural development.
2. Also, modern methods that involving diking, damming and filling-in estuaries to create farmland severely affect the ecological function of the land.

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Tropical Desert:1. If water is not supplied in enough abundance to flow off the land and carry away salts then those salts will build up, leading to salinization of the soil, and its eventual abandonment as salt levels become too high to support plants.2.

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What is the Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative?
The TGCI is an undertaking of the Grasslands Specialist Group with WCPA. The TGCI was launched in June 2008 at a workshop in Hohhot, China where 35 grassland experts from 14 countries adopted the following mission: To reverse the trend of biodiversity loss and degradation of the temperate grasslands biome by promoting both the designation and special management of representative protected areas, and the widespread use of sustainable management practices beyond protected area boundaries, with the goal of at least doubling the current level of protection by 2014.

Where are these grasslands?
Indigenous temperate grasslands occur globally on every continent except Antarctica. They are found in about 20 countries, mainly in mid-latitudes where seasonal climates and soils favour the dominance of perennial grasses or graminoids. Similar grasslands occur above the tree line in tropical or sub-tropical regions such as in the high Andes, Tibetan plateau, Iran and equatorial Africa. See map at this link.

Why are temperate grasslands so threatened?
Indigenous temperate grasslands are one of the world's great biomes, occupying ~8% of the earth's surface. However after cradling human needs for centuries they are the most endangered, the most altered and yet the least protected biome on the planet. Only 3.4% of the world's temperate grasslands are protected.

Once home to the some of the world's greatest assemblages of wildlife (ex: North American bison, Argentina's pampas deer and Asia's saiga antelope) the remaining intact indigenous grasslands now support only remnant populations. More than half of all temperate grasslands have been converted for crop production, forest plantations, urbanization and other land uses such as energy and mining development. Much of the remainder is subject to intensive grazing. These practices have led and are continuing to lead to habitat loss, declining biodiversity, desertification and fragmentation. In addition, the specter of climate change is of ever-increasing concern.

Describe the conservation strategy that the TGCI is using to protect additional grasslands?
The TGCI has developed a global strategy and regional action plans. Building on the global strategy of building awareness and improving communication among IUCN commissions and groups with a similar interest (such as WISP), our regional action plans focus on the Northern Great Plains of North America, the various temperate grassland of South America (pampas, puna, campos and paramo), the central Asian grasslands with a focus on the Kazakh Steppe and the transboundary Daurian Steppe/Amur River Basin of Eastern Mongolia, Russia and China.

It is clear that the greatest potential for large-scale grasslands conservation is in these four regions; thus our focus and energy to get active conservation plans underway in each of these four regions. To be successful global awareness and support is also necessary. We were therefore pleased when all the delegates at the recent IUCN World Conservation Congress supported the motion recognizing the plight of the temperate grasslands.

Contact Bob for more information or to be a member of TGCI.

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Interview: Temperate grasslands, the most threatened biome in the world

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What is the Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative? The TGCI is an undertaking of the Grasslands Specialist Group with WCPA.

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Impact of soy farming in Brazil's tropical savanna

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Impact of soy farming in Brazil's tropical savanna

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( Em português) ( En español)

CAMPOS LINDOS, Brazil - When farmer Julimar Pansera purchased land in Brazil's interior seven years ago, it was blanketed in tiers of fruit trees, twisted shrubs and the occasional palm standing tall in a thicket of undergrowth.

He mowed down most of that vegetation, set it ablaze and started planting soybeans. Over the past decade, he and others in the region have deforested an area larger than South Korea.

Permissive land-use policies and cheap farm acreage here have helped catapult Brazil into an agricultural superpower, the world's largest exporter of soy, beef and chicken and a major producer of pork and corn. This area has also lured farmers and ranchers away from the Amazon jungle, whose decline has spurred a global outcry to protect it.

The tradeoff, environmentalists say, is that while Brazil has slowed destruction of the renowned rainforest from its worst levels, it has put another vital ecological zone at risk: a vast tropical savanna that is home to 5 percent of species on the planet.

Known as the Cerrado, this habitat lost more than 105,000 square kilometers (40,541 square miles) of native cover since 2008, according to government figures. That's 50 percent more than the deforestation seen during the same period in the Amazon, a biome more than three times larger. Accounting for relative size, the Cerrado is disappearing nearly four times faster than the rainforest.

The largest savanna in South America, the Cerrado is a vital storehouse for carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas whose rising emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation are warming the world's atmosphere. Brazilian officials have cited protection of native vegetation as critical to meeting its obligations under the Paris Agreement on climate change. But scientists warn the biome has reached a tipping point that could hamper Brazil's efforts and worsen global warming.

By focusing on one problem, Brazil essentially created another, said Ane Alencar, science director of the non-profit Amazon Environmental Research Institute, known as IPAM.

"There's a high risk for the climate associated with this expansion," Alencar said. "Limiting and calling attention to deforestation in the Amazon, in a way it forced the agribusiness industry to expand in the Cerrado."

The toll can already be seen in the region's water resources. Streams and springs are filling with silt and drying up as vegetation around them vanishes. That in turn is weakening the headwaters of vital rivers flowing to the rest of the country, scientists say. The imperiled waterways include the Sao Francisco, Brazil's longest river outside the Amazon, where water levels are hitting never-before-seen lows in the dry season.

"The removal of vegetation can lead a body of water to extinction," said Liliana Pena Naval, an environmental engineering professor at the Federal University of Tocantins.

Wildlife, too, is under threat, including rare hyacinth macaws, maned wolves and jaguars that call the shrinking savanna home. So are thousands of plants, fish, insects and other creatures found nowhere else on earth, many of which are only beginning to be studied.

"I compare it to the burning of the ancient Library of Alexandria," said Mercedes Bustamante, an ecologist at the University of Brasilia. "You lose the accumulated evolutionary record of thousands of years that never can be recovered."

Farmers see the Cerrado's development as critical to global food security and their nation's prosperity. Brazil's agriculture sector grew a sizzling 13 percent in 2017, while the overall economy barely budged. The nation's ability to keep producing new farmland cheaply has given it an edge over rivals and cemented its status as a vital supplier to the world's tables.

"Imagine, if not for Brazil's production, how much more hunger would there be," farmer Pansera said.

THE GREEN REVOLUTION

Roughly the size of Mexico, straddling Brazil's mid-section from its far western border with Paraguay and stretching northeast towards the Atlantic coast, the Cerrado has seen about half of its native forests and grasslands converted to farms, pastures and urban areas over the past 50 years.

Deforestation in the region has slowed from the early 2000s, when Brazil's soy boom was gaining steam. Still, farmers continue to plow under vast stretches of the biome, propelled largely by Chinese demand for Brazilian meat and grain. The Asian nation is Brazil's No. 1 buyer of soybeans to fatten its own hogs and chickens. China is also a major purchaser of Brazilian pork, beef and poultry to satisfy the tastes of its increasingly affluent consumers.

Rising trade tensions between China and the United States have only deepened that connection. Brazil's soybean exports by value to China are up 18 percent through the first seven months of the year as Chinese buyers have canceled tens of millions of dollars' worth of contracts with U.S. suppliers.

The trend bodes well for producers in the Cerrado's frontier region known as Matopiba, shorthand for the northeastern Brazilian states of Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia. Land here is cheap. Virgin plots near Pansera in the state of Tocantins can be had for $248 an acre on average, according to agribusiness consultancy Informa Economics IEG FNP. That compares to an average of $3,080 per acre for already cleared farmland in the United States. Soy planting in Matopiba has more than doubled over the past decade.

Pansera, 50, is part of a wave of industrious transplants from southern Brazil who are remaking the region. His formal education stopped at middle school, but he found land enough in the Cerrado to match his big ambitions. He now presides over nearly 19 square miles (49 square kilometers) of manicured soy fields and has about 20 full-time workers on his payroll. Pansera's soybeans will bring in an estimated profit of nearly 5 million reais ($1.23 million) this year, most of which he plans to invest back into the farm.

Government policies have intentionally driven industrial-scale farming here. Short on farmland to feed its growing population, Brazil in the 1970s looked to its vast savanna, a region early explorers had dubbed "cerrado," or "closed," because of its tangled woodlands.

State agriculture scientists developed fertilizers and additives to fix the acidic, nutrient-poor earth and created soybean strains that could thrive in the tropics. Arable land exploded. Within a decade, Brazil transformed itself from a food importer to a net exporter. By the 1990s it was moving global commodities markets.

"Agriculture in the Cerrado is what took Brazil to the next level," Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi told Reuters. Known as Brazil's "Soy King," Maggi is a billionaire whose family runs one of the largest private soybean operations in the world, much of it in the Cerrado.

Maggi said growers are respectful of legally allowed limits on deforestation. Their "rational" occupation of the Cerrado has helped Brazil's economy, he said.

Farmers have emerged as a powerful political force bent on keeping Brazil's countryside open for business. Lawmakers in the country's largely rural, pro-agriculture voting bloc, who comprise more than 40 percent of the nation's congress, have led a rollback of environmental laws in recent years.

Those efforts include a 2012 loosening of Brazil's landmark Forest Code that sets requirements for preserving native vegetation. The change reduced potential penalties for farmers, ranchers and loggers charged with past illegal deforestation, and made it easier for landowners to clear more of their holdings. Annual deforestation in the Amazon last year was up 52 percent from a record low in 2012.

Still, environmental protections there remain the most robust in Brazil. Rainforest farmers are required by law to preserve 80 percent of native vegetation on their plots. And global grain traders in 2006 voluntarily agreed to stop purchasing any soy harvested from newly deforested Amazon jungle areas. As part of its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the government pledged to eliminate illegal Amazon deforestation by 2030.

Brazil has made no similar push to preserve the Cerrado, which has long been viewed as a resource to be developed.

Cerrado farmers are required to preserve as little as 20 percent of the natural cover, and up to 35 percent in areas neighboring the Amazon. Those who don't maximize use of their tracts risk having their land declared idle and subject to redistribution under a 1980 federal land-reform initiative aimed at assisting rural, low-income people, said Elvison Nunes Ramos, sustainability coordinator with the Ministry of Agriculture.

"The message being sent to the farmer is that he should not preserve, he should deforest," Nunes Ramos said of the policy.

A spokesman for Incra, the government agency that verifies the use of the rural land, said its job is to ensure "the fulfillment of the social function of the property."

WATER, WILDLIFE UNDER THREAT

Environmentalists say the Cerrado's wooded grasslands have failed to capture the public's attention the way the Amazon's lush jungles have.

People view the Cerrado "just as bushes, twisted vegetation and shrubs," lamented Alencar, the science director at IPAM.

What many don't see, she said, is the connection between the soybean-fed meat on their plates and the steady decline of one of the world's great carbon sinks, a bulwark against global warming.

Plants here send roots deep into the earth to survive seasonal drought and fires, creating a vast underground network that some have likened to an upside-down forest. Destruction of surface vegetation, and the resulting die-off of the life below, released 248 million tonnes of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in 2016, according to estimates by the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian conservation group. That's roughly two-and-a-half times the annual tailpipe emissions from all cars in Brazil.

Watersheds are hurting, too.

In Palmeirante, a rural municipality in the state of Tocantins, subsistence farmer Ronivon Matias de Andrade blames expanding mega-farms for damaging a community water source. Dressed in faded shorts and flip flops, he showed a visitor the remains of what until recently had been a shady woodland: uprooted trees and freshly exposed earth pocked with heavy-equipment tracks.

Stripped of its vegetation, sandy topsoil is now filling a nearby creek and an adjoining freshwater pool where he and other rural families draw drinking water. He scooped up a murky handful in disgust.

"How many are being finished off in this manner in this state?" 43-year-old Andrade said.

Environmentalists say vanishing creeks like those in Palmeirante are threatening the nation's water supply. Seemingly insignificant sources - tiny brooks, nameless rivulets - are vital building blocks supplying water to tributary streams that in turn feed some of Brazil's largest rivers.

Of a dozen major water systems in Brazil, eight are born in the Cerrado. They include the Sao Francisco, the country's fourth-largest river, which was once famed for its paddle-wheeled riverboats known as gaiolas. Environmentalists say man-made diversions, including agriculture and hydroelectric dams, have helped alter water levels to a degree that long stretches of the river are now unnavigable during the dry season.

Loss of native ground cover is also driving microclimate change in the region, they say. Reduced vegetation leads to higher ground temperatures and lower humidity, a recipe for less rainfall. A study conducted at the University of Brasilia links deforestation to an 8.4 percent drop in precipitation from 1977 to 2010 in the Cerrado.

Cerrado wildlife is under pressure as habitat shrinks. More than 300 species that dwell here are considered threatened with extinction, according to the government. Among them are 44 rare types of "annual fish" unique to the Cerrado whose short lives begin with spring rains and end with the summer heat. Scientists suspect that increasing dry spells could be interrupting their delicate reproduction cycles.

Other creatures, including rheas - giant ostrich-like birds - will soon join the endangered species list if nothing is done to reverse the slide, says Ricardo Machado, a zoology professor at the University of Brasilia. He said the birds' numbers have plummeted due to loss of native ground cover critical to breeding and nesting.

Machado worries that unique Cerrado plants, insects and other creatures may vanish before scientists have an opportunity to identify them, much less study them.

"There is a universe to be discovered," Machado said. "All attention is focused on the Amazon, no one speaks for the Cerrado."

REINING IN THE SOY BOOM

That's beginning to change.

Dozens of groups, including Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation and the Brazilian research group IPAM, last year began pushing for large multinationals to protect the biome. In a document known as the Cerrado Manifesto, they called for immediate action to stop deforestation in the region.

More than 60 companies, including McDonalds, Unilever and Walmart, have signed on so far. The firms have agreed to support measures that would eliminate native vegetation loss in the Cerrado from their supply chains. But in contrast to the 2006 Amazon soy moratorium, the Cerrado Manifesto did not commit signatories to halt purchases of farm products from newly deforested areas.

Walmart and Unilever said they are committed to achieving zero net deforestation in their supply chains by 2020, meaning any destruction in one region would be offset by recuperation of similar forest elsewhere. Walmart said all its beef suppliers in the Cerrado are monitored to ensure they don't contribute to deforestation there. McDonalds didn't respond to a request for comment.

Separately, Netherlands-based Louis Dreyfus Company in June became the first major commodity trader to pledge to stop buying soy from newly deforested land specifically in the Cerrado. The company gave no timetable, but said it would work to establish a "realistic target date" to end deforestation in its Cerrado supply chain.

Brazil's former Minister of Environment Jose Sarney Filho, who recently left office to run for Senate, has proposed an international effort to compensate landowners who preserve natural habitat. He raised the issue at last November's global climate summit in Germany, but the effort has yet to attract major backers.

Farmer Pansera, meanwhile, sees big things ahead for his patch of the Cerrado. Supervising the harvest on his land earlier this year, he watched a pair of combines chew through rows of soybean plants. The giant machines stripped away the beans and spit them into empty grain trucks rolling just behind to catch the bounty.

He said there is no future without growth, and the frontier region of Matopiba is just getting started. He plans to plant an additional 180 hectares of soy next year on newly cleared land.

"There is still a large area to be opened," Pansera said. "It will be one of the great centers of Brazilian agriculture."

Follow Reuters Investigates

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Appetite for Destruction: Brazil's soy boom devours tropical savanna

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( Em português) ( En español) CAMPOS LINDOS, Brazil - When farmer Julimar Pansera purchased land in Brazil's interior seven years ago, it was blanketed in tiers of fruit trees, twisted shrubs and the occasional palm standing tall in a thicket of undergrowth. He mowed down most of that vegetation, set it ablaze and started planting soybeans.

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Tropical forest constitutes the most diverse and complex biomes on Earth. Since Humboldt to the present day, the ecology of these biomes has been captivating and challenging scientists. The speciality of the ecology of these biomes reaches further than pure natural history; they are of key importance to the world: from timber, to medicine, to regulating the global climate. Now many people consider these unique biomes to be at a crossroads. With increased deforestation and fragmentation of tropical forests in the shadow of global warming, there has never been a more pressing time to understand the ecology of these vital biomes than the present day. This highlights what is particularly special about the ecology of tropical biomes: we know very little about it. To conserve these biomes effectively and sustainably we must understand their ecological functions and systems.
Diversity, and complexity
In the tropics there is high annual rainfall, and relatively stable average temperature, with only two seasons: wet and dry. The high annual rainfall results in leaching of the soils causing nutrient poor soils. Although the tropics share these similar climate and soil conditions, there are many different types of tropical forests: from dry to rain, and from mangrove to eucalyptus. They are divided along gradients of temperature, humidity, altitude, and flooding; as well as being divided by their evolutionary history, with different species playing similar roles in different forest types, for example new world monkeys compared to old. From nutrient poor soils has arisen the most productive, diverse, and complex terrestrial ecosystems on Earth.

As well as a large diversity of forest types, the biodiversity within the forests is the highest on Earth, harbouring around 50% of the world species. One of the most noticeably biodiverse groups in the forest are invertebrates, particularly insects. Nigel Stork fogged ten trees of just five different species with insecticide, which brought down around 2800 different species of arthropod, and, what was truly amazing, was that most of these species were represented by a single individual! Now, with Bornean forest having as many as 300 tree species per hectare, and then considering the biodiversity of arthropods in the leaf litter, or in epiphytes, one starts to comprehend how special these ecosystems are. In fact, a study in 2004 investigated how much of the canopy biodiversity was living among large epiphytes. From just five basket ferns they collected around 250,000 individual arthropods, and they concluded that epiphytes contain about as much animal life as does the canopy above it, doubling the estimate of invertebrate biomass in the rainforest canopy from just five plants. This is also just invertebrate biodiversity; the plant diversity is equally staggering, with orchids, ferns, bromeliads, lianas, mosses, liverworts, algae, and lichen covering the branches of trees, and on top of that epiphytes growing on epiphytes, creating a fractal image of plant life.

Tropical forests are not just a random combination of organisms, but a complex ecological web of interactions between species. As written in 'On the Origin of Species' (1859): 'When we look at the plants and bushes clothing an entangled bank, we are tempted to attribute their proportional numbers and kinds to what we call chance. But how false a view this is!'. I think this complexity is best shown by the forest's sensitivities. The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project shows that when the forests become fragmented, the entire ecological community changes. For example, in a one-hectare fragment after 2 years of isolation, the number of bird species declined by 60%. The high complexity means changes in the population sizes and community compositions can trigger a chain reaction, with synergistic effects, that ripples through the forest, impacting many other species.
Practising ecology in tropical forests
In my opinion, what is particularly special about the ecology in tropical forests, is that we are still in the very early stages of understanding this field: 'The science of biodiversity is not much farther along than medicine was in the Middle Ages. We are still at the stage, as it were, of cutting open bodies to find out what organs are inside' -The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (2001). Tropical forest ecology was for a long time focused on describing specific patterns and processes, but Hubbell's Neutral Theory disrupted this into carefully questioning many of its most fundamental assumptions.

Along with this theoretical turning point in tropical forest ecology, practical ones have come with modern technology. One of the reasons why we know relatively little about tropical forest ecology is because tropical forests present many challenges to ecologists, particularly how to representatively survey the most biodiverse area on Earth, which happens to be up to 30m high in the canopy. This challenge has produced some creative solutions: from training macaques to collect specimens; to mini zeppelins; to construction cranes. Now with modern technology it is becoming safer and easier to survey these areas, though it is still by no means easy. As with deep sea and space exploration, much of tropical forest ecology is still in the dark, which makes it very exciting.
The changing ecology
Now our lack of understanding and knowledge is more important than ever, because, as we run into the Anthropocene, the ecology of tropical forests is changing. This reveals another speciality of tropical forest ecology: how to sustainably conserve the most exploited, complex, least understood, and important terrestrial environment on Earth, while allowing for development of communities who live in/rely on tropical forests.

Tropical forests are not just changing due to deforestation for timber and agricultural land, but also due to selective extractions of plants, poaching, biological invasion, fragmentation, and climate change. These changes are particularly hard to combat because several threats are likely to interact synergistically with one another, as well as precipitating indirect and direct effects through poorly understood interaction webs.

It is important to conserve tropical forests not just because they support around 50% of described species, and possibly an even larger number of undescribed species, but because they also play a disproportionate role in global carbon and energy cycles. In the early 2000s forests in 75 tropical counties studied contained 247 billion tons of carbon (NASA). This means that the deforestation of tropical forests is a significant contributor to carbon emissions. Another important reason for their conservation is that tropical forest provides a livelihood for millions of people.

There is some debate about the extent to which tropical forests are being negatively affected by climate change, but if anything, this just highlights the need for more knowledge on tropical forest ecology. It is crucial to understand the ecological effects of this anthropogenic change if we want to effectively conserve tropical forests.

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The Importance of Tropical Forests: Why We Should Conserve Them and How They Affect the Rest of the World - The Oxford Student

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Image Credit:Jami Dwyer Tropical forest constitutes the most diverse and complex biomes on Earth. Since Humboldt to the present day, the ecology of these biomes has been captivating and challenging scientists. The speciality of the ecology of these biomes reaches further than pure natural history; they are of key importance to the world: from timber, ...

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Protecting Biodiversity in the Amazon Rainforest

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Protecting Biodiversity in the Amazon Rainforest

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1. Activate students' prior knowledge about the environmental effects of biodiversity loss.
Activate students' prior understanding about human impacts on the environment by showing a photograph of clear-cutting in Brazil. Define the vocabulary terms clear-cutting and deforestation and then read aloud the photo caption. Have students discuss what the photo shows and brainstorm potential consequences to the ecosystem. Ask: What did this area look like before clear-cutting happened? What organisms might live in an area like this? What are some reasons people cut down trees in a rainforest? Who benefits from cutting down the trees? If possible, elicit local examples of forest or biodiversity loss (e.g., for new development) to illustrate the fact that this is also happening locally, not just in faraway countries.Have students answer the same questions for the local example. Ask: What living things are affected by clearing areas for development? How are they affected? Then have students return to thinking about the effects of deforestation on the Amazon rainforest ecosystem and answer the same questions. Ask: What living things are affected by deforestation? How are they affected? Invite volunteers to share their thinking with the class. The focus of this discussion is to get students thinking about what organisms inhabit the tropical rainforest and how habitat destruction affects where they live, how they live, and possibly the survival of their species. Introduce the term biodiversity and explain that the Amazon rainforest is the most biodiverse place on Earth. But, this biodiversity is threatened due to human activity. Explain to students that they will explore biodiversity in the Amazon to try to understand why it is so important to protect. Tell students that the purpose of this activity is for them to construct an argument for protecting biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest.

2. Construct knowledge about biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest.

Project the MapMaker Interactive geo-tour Geography and Wildlife of the Amazon Basin on a screen and select the bookmark Where is the Amazon Basin?Point out the highlighted Amazon Basin and discuss its location and size. During this time, if students are unfamiliar with the MapMaker Interactive, point out some of the basic tools like zooming in (+) and out (-). Also point out the bookmarks at the bottom of the map. Explain to students that they will work in small groups to learn more about a smaller region of the Amazon rainforest. Distribute the worksheet Exploring the Animals and Plants in the Amazon Rainforest. Divide students into small groups of three to explore different regions (north, west, east) of the Amazon rainforest. Assign a different region to each group. More than one group will investigate the same region. Explain that while the Amazon rainforest is known for its biodiversity, in this activity students will investigate a very small sample of the vast biodiversity that exists in this region. Have each student complete Part 1. Using MapMaker to Explore Animals and Plants in Regions of the Amazon Rainforest. Direct them to select three animals and three plants from their assigned region and write facts relevant to the importance of the plant and animal within the habitat. Advise students to focus on how the plants and animals interact with other organisms in the forest as they complete the tables. Explain to students that this information will provide the evidence they need to support the arguments they will construct later in the activity.
3. Extend students' understanding of biodiversity through online research.
Once students have completed Part 1 of the worksheet, have them select one animal and one plant to research further online and complete Part 2. Conducting Online Research. Direct students to use website links associated with each plant or animal in the Geography and Wildlife of the Amazon Basin geo-tour. Ask students to add the facts they find to their tables on the worksheet.
4. Introduce threats to the Amazon rainforest.
Have students recall the clear-cutting photograph in Brazil from the beginning of the activity and share some of the real-world threats to the rainforest: human development, deforestation due to logging and cattle ranching, infrastructure development, hydroelectric power projects, and others. Focusing on their region (from step 3 above), ask students to consider the consequences of habitat destruction to the plants and animals from their region and discuss this in their groups. Ask students to take notes that could be useful when constructing their arguments about protecting the biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest.
5. Construct an evidence-based argument for protecting biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest.
Distribute the rubric Evidence-Based Argument about Protecting Biodiversity in the Amazon Rainforestand review it with students. Next, distribute the worksheet Constructing an Evidence-Based Argument. Ask students to construct their evidence-based argument for why it is important to protect biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest. Introduce and explain the components of a scientific argument:

Claim: a statement that answers the original question/problem.

Evidence: scientific data that supports the claim. The data needs to be appropriate and sufficient to support the claim.

Reasoning: a justification that connects the evidence to the claim.

Remind students that the facts they collected from their exploration of the Geography and Wildlife of the Amazon Basin geo-tour in the MapMaker Interactive and from their online research will serve as the evidence they need to support their claims.

6. Have students present their scientific arguments.

Have students share their arguments about the importance of protecting biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest with the class. Students with the same region should present following each other so students can compare the different pieces of evidence and reasoning they used to support their claim. Conclude with a whole-class discussion reflecting on the potential loss of biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest. Ask: What is biodiversity? What is important about biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest? What happens when biodiversity decreases? What environmental issues are impacting biodiversity?

Alternative Assessment

Use the provided answer key for the worksheet Exploring the Animals and Plants in the Amazon Rain Forest and the provided rubric to score each group's scientific arguments.

Extending the Learning

Have students observe biodiversity around the outside of their school, making connections between the plants and animals within the habitat. Have students work in groups of two or three to mark sampling sections of the school grounds with circles (such as a small hula hoop). Have them search for insects, birds, animal tracks, scat, feathers, nests, different types of trees, grasses, and plants; list signs of plant and animal life found in the sample area; and estimate the number of each species. Remind students that biodiversity refers to the number of species as well as the number of each species. Have students discuss the biodiversity found in their sample area.

Identify an environmental activist or decision-making stakeholder that is connected to preserving the Amazon rain forest. Have students send their final arguments from the activity in the form of a letter to this person or group.

Have students transform their arguments into public service announcements and publish short YouTube videos.

Create relevant Twitter hashtags (#Amazonbiodiversity, #Amazonplant) for the different regions or organisms and have students tweet interesting facts, questions, or concerns they come across as they conduct their research. Advise students to not include any identifying information in their tweets.

Create a closed classroom website or discussion board for students to share questions, ideas, or concerns as they conduct their research.

Credits

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Research Manager

Paulina Vaca, National Geographic Society

Writer

Heather J. Johnson, Vanderbilt University

Editor

Elizabeth Wolzak, National Geographic Society

Copyeditor

Christina Riska Simmons

Educator Reviewer

Christine Wolfe, Environmental Science Educator, Wicomico Day School, Salisbury, Maryland

Expert Reviewer

Sarah Haines, Professor, Science Education & Biology, Towson University

Producer

Parker Ziegler, National Geographic Society

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Christina Riska Simmons

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Protecting Biodiversity in the Amazon Rainforest

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1. Activate students' prior knowledge about the environmental effects of biodiversity loss. Activate students' prior understanding about human impacts on the environment by showing a photograph of clear-cutting in Brazil. Define the vocabulary terms clear-cutting and deforestation and then read aloud the photo caption.

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Amazonia: The Human Impact on the Amazon

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Amazonia: The Human Impact on the Amazon

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Together, this collection of activities, case studies, and interactive maps provides students with a holistic picture of the current state of the Amazon rain forest, and raises awareness about the short- and long-term impacts of human activity on it's biodiversity. The National Geographic Society supports education as a vital component in conservation.

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This great little animation explains how families are being unfairly evicted from their land and left with no way to grow food or earn a living as a result of big land deals in poor countries.

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Oxfam index of food security around the world

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Oxfam's Global Food Index is a snapshot of 125 countries indicating the best and worst places to eat. The data has been compiled as an interactive graph - to show where people face particular challenges in getting enough of the right food.

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Feeding the world: Can global crop production meet future demands? - A story map presented by Esri

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Fact 1: Close to a third of U.S. adults are obese. Fact 2: Almost 90% of people with newly-diagnosed type 2 diabetes are overweight. County maps reflect the close links between these key public health challenges.

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ACTIVITY: What do people around the world eat?

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ACTIVITY: What do people around the world eat?

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Students view images of families around the world and the food they eat in a week. They examine the similarities and differences in relation to different attributes, such as type of food, nutrition, cost, and quantity. Discussions of stereotype and diversity help students gain sensitivity to the strengths and needs of different people around the world.

The learner will:

develop an awareness of the diversity of food around the globe.

identify personal biases and stereotypes related to food.

explain the value of sensitivity and openness toward diverse cultures.

compare and contrast their food choices with the eating habits of others locally and globally.

explain how food choices are limited by resources, culture, and geography.

Write the names of five continents at the top of five chart papers: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Display the signs on the classroom wall for youth to write on.

culture: values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world that are learned and are shared by members of a community

food insecurity: the risk or fear of not having consistent access to food that meets people's dietary needs and food preferences; not being sure one will have enough food or the right food to feel full, grow, and be healthy

Write a personal reflection in response to one or more of the following questions: How do food differences in the world reflect strengths and needs of diverse people? What are your personal biases related to food? What will you be more sensitive about in the future related to food availability and personal tastes?

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compare/contrast cultures diverse communities diversity economics global community global issues graphic organizer health and disease hunger major world regions may personal response reflection viewing viewpoint visual media

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Students view images of families around the world and the food they eat in a week. They examine the similarities and differences in relation to different attributes, such as type of food, nutrition, cost, and quantity. Discussions of stereotype and diversity help students gain sensitivity to the strengths and needs of different people around the world.

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CSIRO - Sustainable Agricultural Practices in Australia

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CSIRO - Sustainable Agricultural Practices in Australia

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We're working with farmers to develop new tools and management practices to increase profitability and productivity, reduce resource use and maintain ecosystem health.

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A 5-step guide to feeding a population of 9 billion

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When we think about threats to the environment, we tend to picture cars and smokestacks, not dinner. But the truth is, our need for food poses one of the biggest dangers to the planet.

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National Geographic:     The Future of Food 

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National Geographic:     The Future of Food 

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Feeding the world is going to take everything we've got.

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Future of Food: Why Food Matters Now More Than Ever

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In a special eight-month series, National Geographic is investigating the future of food. Why now? Dennis Dimick, executive environment editor at National Geographic magazine, explains the urgency of today's global food issues.At National Geographic's Future of Food forum on May 2, 2014, leading experts gathered to discuss how we can feed a global population set to top nine billion by 2050.Click here for National Geographic's eight-month series on the future of food.

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INFOGRAPHIC: What's wrong with our food system?

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INFOGRAPHIC: What's wrong with our food system?

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Around the world every night, one in seven people go to bed hungry-that's almost one billion people. People are hungry not because there isn't enough food produced but because our food system is broken. In fact, 80% of the world's hungry are directly involved in food production. We can address this hunger if we support small-scale food producers, tackle climate change, and reduce food waste. Check out our latest infographic to learn about some of the ways that the food system can be fixed to improve the quality of life for millions.

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Infographic: What's Wrong with Our Food System?

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Around the world every night, one in seven people go to bed hungry-that's almost one billion people. People are hungry not because there isn't enough food produced but because our food system is broken. In fact, 80% of the world's hungry are directly involved in food production.

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A collection of online links to videos and activities relating to food production & security

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FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization): information, videos, current events - all current and up to date.

World Food Programme: detailed information on hunger and malnutrition, including global statistics and a "hunger map".

Kids can make a difference: videos and information showing how kids can make a difference and what they are doing in various countries to end poverty and hunger.

Oxfam Australia: excellent, detailed information for secondary students on global food production and food security.

Global Education: food security information and teaching activities for upper primary (Food for the World) and upper secondary (The Power of Food).

Food First: an organisation that works to end injustices that cause hunger through research, education and action. Lots of material for the teacher and students.

World Health Organisation: information and links around food security and nutrition.

CSIRO: highlights current research in agriculture (senior secondary).

World Vision: great information (use the search feature).

World Hunger Notes: quotes, information and events occurring at present. All is up to date and includes external links.

Australian Institute of Family Studies: food insecurity in Australia - what is it and who experiences it?

Caritas Australia: food security, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture are discussed, with a detailed account of the factors that can cause food insecurity.

FoodWise is DoSomething's national campaign to reduce the environmental impact of Australia's food consumption. The website gives practical advice and information on what can be done to solve environmental issues.

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FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization): information, videos, current events - all current and up to date. World Food Programme: detailed information on hunger and malnutrition, including global statistics and a "hunger map". Kids can make a difference: videos and information showing how kids can make a difference and what they are doing in various countries to end poverty and hunger.

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A collection of activities and resources to be used in the classroom.

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Global food issues are complex. While supplies have surpassed population growth, 821 million people still go to bed hungry every night. This resource will help learners aged 11-14 to understand how global supply chains currently work; where

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How sustainable is your food? Take the quiz

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When it comes to your food, there's choices you can make thatwill create a greener, more environmentally friendly menu. Test your sustainability knowledge with the following 12 food choices.

1. Pasture beef vs. Feedlot beef

Beef farming has one of the highest environmental impacts of all the food groups, with greenhouse gas emissions from beef farming contributing 10% of the total emissions in Australia, mostly in the form of methane. The good news is that emission rates vary with the type of feed used.

On grazing beef farms the majority of the cattle is grass-fed rather than grain-fed with soy or corn (these two grains requiring substantial water, fertilisers, transport and processing), making pasture cattle appear to be the more environmentally sustainable option.

However, a study by the Australian National University compared organic beef farming with conventional feedlot farming and found that the grass-fed beef produced more emissions than the grain-fed beef. Grain-fed farms are also considered more environmentally friendly than large grazing cattle farms as less forest is cleared for the smaller feeding lots and they have strict environmental regulations which protect the water table and control how they manage waste and run-off. Who would have thought?

Winner: Feedlot beef.

2. Fresh fish vs. Farmed fish

Although it sounds more natural, ocean fishing is undertaken on a massive scale that results in enormous fossil fuel usage and huge product wastage. Commercial ocean fishing is also linked to the reduction of fish populations and even the extinction of some marine species. The fossil fuels needed to run the boats and the damage done to reefs and other wildlife areas through the use of dragnets is huge.

In comparison, farmed fish are commonly fed GMO soy and colour pellets and produce large amounts of chemical pollution, which is damaging to the ecosystems and wildlife in the rivers and waterways the fish are grown in. There's also thought to be more disease in farmed fish.

There's no clear winner here. The best type of fish would be hand caught from your local, clean waterway.

Winner: Your own hand-caught fish.

3. Eggs vs. Cheese

With cheese production having similar environmental impacts as beef (and being worse for the environment than milk production due to the extra processing), cheese is the obvious bad guy here. If we look at the amount of water needed for cheese production, it's needed not only for the cattle, but also for irrigating their pastures or for the production of grain feed.

Studies have suggested that one kilogram of cheese takes over 3000 litres of water to make! When you compare this to the significantly smaller environmental impact of raising hens for eggs, it's easy to see the winner.

4. Lamb vs. Chicken

According to Professor Andy LeBrocque from the University of Southern Queensland, chicken is the most environmentally sustainable livestock. Being small, chickens don't require much land to thrive and they require less water, feed and are lighter and simpler to transport than larger livestock.

On the other hand, lamb production has the most environmental impact after beef. Lamb farms produce more greenhouse gas emissions than chicken farms, use more water and need more land clearance.

But in a bit of a twist, caged chickens actually produce more pollutants than lamb - so free-range chicken is the winner for making your plate greener.

Winner: Free-range chicken.

5. Brown rice vs Basmati rice

Brown rice comes from paddy rice, with some varieties grown in Australia. There's only one processing step in the making of brown rice, where the husk is removed. Easy. Australia follows strict water usage regulations, making Australian brown rice one of the most water-efficient in the world.

Basmati rice comes specifically from India and Pakistan, which don't follow or track water usage or enforce environmental regulations.

Basmati also requires a lot of fossil fuels in getting to your plate. It's a type of long grain rice which has the husk removed but needs to go through a second stage of polishing before it's ready for sale, making it less efficient than brown rice.

Winner: Brown rice.

6. Quinoa vs. Chia

Quinoa and chia are some of the hottest superfoods around, but which one is more environmentally sustainable?

Quinoa is a seed grown mostly in the Andean highlands in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. Unfortunately, its exploding popularity has caused significant soil erosion in these areas. It's now also starting to be grown in areas of the USA, Asia and Europe.

Chia seeds, originally from Mexico and Guatemala, are now largely grown in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, where there are strict environmental regulations governing their production.

You should make your choice between the two seeds based on where they're grown: if cultivated close to you, they will have less environmental impact than if they've travelled a million miles to get to your door, so check the country of origin before purchase.

Winner: It depends on where the seed is grown.

7. Dairy milk vs. Alternative milks

Dairy milk impacts the environment in a big way. According to the United Nation's Food and Agricultural reports, the dairy industry is responsible for up to 4% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and produces 13kg of CO2 per month.

From the production of feed for cows to the processing of the milk, refrigerated transport and the various packaging materials, there's a big environmental cost.

In general, non-dairy milks require large amounts of processing too but can be more sustainable. For instance, coconut milk uses less water, energy and land and produces fewer emissions thandairy milk - as well as soy, rice or almond milk. Soy and rice milk require a lot of land clearing, while almond milk requires a lot of water.

Winner: Alternative milks.

8. Broccoli vs. Kale

When it comes to fruit and veggies, the main factors dictating environmental impact include the weight and size of the product (determining how much fossil fuel is required to transport it), how far the product has to travel, whether it's being grown in season or if it's coming from cold storage, how hardy the plant is, how much wastage results from its growing process, if it's organic or conventionally farmed and if it's being wrapped in plastic for sale.

Using these factors to measure kale against broccoli, kale comes in first. It's hardy and adaptable for many conditions, it's lighter per bunch than broccoli, it's not often brought in from overseas, not often wrapped in plastic for sale and it's easy to buy the organic version - the organic version often being from a local farm.

Winner: Kale.

9. Apples vs. Pineapple

Between apples and pineapples, the most environmentally sustainable fruit is the one that is in season, and doesn't travel far to reach your home.

If you live in a tropical or temperate area and it's summer, then pineapple wins, since that's its growing season.

But if it's winter and you live in a predominantly cooler climate, apples are the more sustainable choice as they have not travelled too far to get to you, and haven't been kept in long-term cold storage overseas.

Winner: It depends on your location.

10. Lentils vs. Tofu

Legumes are considered one of the most sustainable crops to grow as they produce very little emissions and don't need much water compared to other crops.

Most legumes also reintroduce nitrogen to the soil, so they don't require nitrogen-based fertilisers.

On the other hand, soy production has a massive impact on the environment, with significant amounts of land cleared to grow soy crops and, unless the soy is organic, large amounts of fertilisers and herbicides are used.

In the processing of soy to tofu more emissions are released and there's more water and energy used, so lentils are the clear winner here.

Winner: Lentils.

11. Wheat vs. Oats

In the contest between wheat and oats, wheat is the standout baddy. A massive amount of water is used to irrigate the enormous wheat crops; the harvesting process requires lots of machinery and large amounts of fertilisers are used. The processing of turning wheat into bread also contributes significantly to global warming.

Oats require far less water and processing from beginning to end, so they win this battle.

Winner: Oats.

12. Kangaroo vs. Pork

Pork comes from controlled farms and feeding systems, and kangaroo is almost entirely a wild, roaming animal, grazing where it can.

Kangaroo is undeniably the most sustainable meat out of all livestock, with very little to no feeding lots, chemical wastage or water usage in comparison to pork farms that produce moderate to high chemical pollution and require large volumes of water and energy for production.

Winner: Kangaroo.

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How sustainable is your food? Take the quiz! - Fitness First Magazine

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When it comes to your food, there's choices you can make that will create a greener, more environmentally friendly menu. Test your sustainability knowledge with the following 12 food choices. 1. Pasture beef vs. Feedlot beef Beef farming has one of the highest environmental impacts of all the food groups, with greenhouse gas emissions from beef farming contributing 10% ...

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Examples of ways that farmers are improving their practices with the prospect that they will one day need to feed 9 Million people

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Founded by Chairman Jeff Skoll and under the leadership of CEO David Linde, Participant (www.participant.com) combines the power of a good story well told with real world impact and awareness around today’s most vital issues. Through its worldwide network of traditional and digital distribution, ali…

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© Open Food Network

The Open Food Network wants to change the way we connect with our food, by closing the gap between the consumer and the farmer and making it easier to access local food.

To bring about a sea change in food systems, it's not enough to just buy locally grown food, or to support small farmers in principle, although those efforts certainly help. But to really reconnect with our food and the people who grow it, it's important to be able to buy directly from the farmer, or from a smaller food hub, which can be somewhat difficult if you happen to miss the farmers market or live a fair distance from the farm or market.

With that in mind, a new networked solution could benefit the farmers, the smaller food hubs (distribution network and retail outlets), and the consumer, by connecting them together in a transparent and authentic manner. The Open Food Network (OFN) is designed with the needs of all three of these food system stakeholders in mind, and if it gets the traction it deserves, it could help to turn the food system on its head.

"Lots of people are working to break the stranglehold that supermarkets and large agribusiness have over our food system. We've spent 3 years talking with many farmers, producers, eaters and local enterprises (like food hubs, independent retailers and co-ops) about how we can work together to take back control of our food. The Open Food Network is our response.
By turning the existing food system on its head, the Open Food Network provides efficient ways for buyers (hubs) to connect with many smaller sellers (producers) and distribute food into their communities." - OFN

The OFN is a flagship project from the nonprofit Open Food Foundation, which was established to "develop and protect a commons of open source knowledge, code, applications and platforms for fair and sustainable food systems".

At the heart of the OFN project is the desire to put control of the food system back in to the hands of the eaters and the farmers, instead of in the clutches of large food distributors and retailers, and it comes with a full suite of tools for food producers and distributors alike. The OFN has components for managing and scheduling orders, taking payments and arranging for deliveries, and allowing farmers to list their own produce, to tell their stories, and to set their own prices.

These features address issues in local food sales and distribution that don't often get seen by the consumers (such as the logistics of getting the food from the soil to the table, while also keeping it fresh and affordable), but which can affect the functioning of local food systems. While there are plenty of places for people to get online listings for farmers markets and produce availability, this platform wants to also take care of the grower's needs, which is another important piece of the local food puzzle, and because the Open Food Network is an open source platform, the underlying code is publicly available to use or change to fit a location or situation.

The one weak link in many small farmer's operations is that because it does take quite a bit of time and effort to produce the food, there often isn't enough time in the day (especially during harvest season) to do all of the marketing, online sales, customer engagement, and promotional work as well. By rolling these elements into the OFN, it's possible for farmers to take advantage of this scalable solution, so that selling directly to consumers or food hubs, as well as managing the distribution of the food, can be easier than ever before.

A demo of the OFN platform is currently available online, which aims to show what's possible for local food networking, but in order to fully launch the project, and to make it available to more people around the world, the team is raising money through Start Some Good, which could enable them to finish fully fleshing out the software and prepare for a public launch.

The Open Food Network wants to change the way we connect with our food, by closing the gap between the consumer and the farmer and making it easier to access local food.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments.

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Open source local food marketplace aims to make it easier to find, buy, and sell sustainable foods

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The Open Food Network wants to change the way we connect with our food, by closing the gap between the consumer and the farmer and making it easier to access local food. To bring about a sea change in food systems, it's not enough to just buy locally grown food, or to support small farmers in principle, although those efforts certainly help.

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How Farmers are Supporting the Environment

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How Farmers are Supporting the Environment

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Biodiversity

Forward-thinking growers are using their land to provide habitat to pollinators, native plants, and other local wildlife. Learn how practices like cover crops, no-till, and crop rotation are demonstrating how a farm can be a positive influence on the environment.

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How Farmers are Supporting the Environment

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Biodiversity Forward-thinking growers are using their land to provide habitat to pollinators, native plants, and other local wildlife. Learn how practices like cover crops, no-till, and crop rotation are demonstrating how a farm can be a positive influence on the environment.

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Does aquaculture have the potential to feed the world's hungry?

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Does aquaculture have the potential to feed the world's hungry?

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Over one billion people worldwide depend on fish as a source of animal protein in their diets. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) flagship publication The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012, global per capita seafood consumption stands at 18.1 kilograms (39.8 pounds) on average, and that number is expected to increase over the next decades.

Aquaculture is considered one of the fastest growing animal food production sectors, and accounts for nearly half of the supply of fish for consumption around the world. FAO estimates that total fish production from aquaculture reached more than 63 million tonnes in 2011, in comparison to 47 million tonnes in 2006. World aquaculture is concentrated in Asia, where approximately 90 percent of global production takes place. China has emerged as the world's leading producer in aquaculture, followed by India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Thailand.

The global fisheries sector employs an estimated 35 million people, 20 percent of them in the aquaculture industry, according to Sinéad Lehane, research analyst at Future Directions International (FDI) and the author of a recent strategic analysis paper Fish for the Future: Aquaculture and Food Security. Today, aquaculture holds the potential to improve the livelihoods of people living in developing countries, and can deliver a wide range of benefits, including higher nutritional value through increased protein consumption, improved food security, and higher household incomes.

Lehane points out that many countries are successfully employing aquaculture to improve local incomes and food security. For example, the implementation of new technologies and practices, such as artificial propagation - a fish reproduction method where mature eggs are expelled from female fish and artificially fertilized with milt from male fish under controlled conditions - enabled increased catfish production in Vietnam, and helped to build the incomes of people living in the Mekong Delta.

But as fish farming continues to expand, concerns are growing about aquaculture's negative impacts on the environment and global biodiversity, including the degradation of water quality, fish diseases, and overexploitation of wild fish used as feed for farmed fish. Lehane emphasizes the need to move toward a more efficient and sustainable aquaculture industry.

The industry faces a series of other challenges, such as limited access to markets - particularly in urban centers - due to underdeveloped infrastructure, poor governance, and a weak regulatory framework; lack of training and expertise; and limited access to financial aid for smallholder farmers, which prevents them from generating an adequate income through aquaculture.

Lehane points out that Australia could play a pivotal role in enhancing food security through aquaculture, mainly thanks to an optimal location, stronger regulatory framework, and access to technologies.

Join the Conversation:

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Does Aquaculture Have the Potential to Feed the World's Hungry? - Food Tank

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Over one billion people worldwide depend on fish as a source of animal protein in their diets. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) flagship publication The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012 , global per capita seafood consumption stands at 18.1 kilograms (39.8 pounds) on average, and that number is expected to increase over the next decades.

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Can the blue revolution solve the world's food puzzle?

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By Daniel Stone

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Not because of someone's hopeful wish, but because the world produces enough calories to go around. Each day, farmers grow 2,800 calories per person on the planet, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). That's enough to surpass the recommended intake of 2,100 daily calories per person-and enough to support a population inching toward nine billion, and then ten billion.

So why do 805 million people still have too little to eat? To start with, it's important to understand the difference between hunger and undernourishment.

People all over the world go hungry, even for just a few hours, when they don't have enough to eat. Hunger is a physical condition marked by stomach pangs and general fatigue.

Undernourishment is a more chronic condition than hunger. Undernourishment affects communities, and even entire countries and region s.
Measuring Undernourishment
Each year, the FAO measures undernourishment around the world.

"What we try to do is come up with a comprehensive picture of food insecurity," says FAO economist Josef Schmidhuber.

The process is never simple. In countries most at need, development agencies find it hard to get food in and data out. Food often doesn't get to the people who need it. Some of these people are isolated in rural communities, while others live in politically unstable countries or areas ravaged by natural disaster s.

Asia has the most undernourished people. According to FAO researchers, parts of Africa and Asia are plagued by a lack of income, poor agricultural development and few social safety nets. North Korea may be the best example of a country with a political climate that limits trade and food aid.

There is some good news: Since 1990, the overall number of undernourished people around the world has gone down-that means 209 million fewer undernourished people.
Solving World Undernourishment
Ultimately, solving world undernourishment comes with diminishing returns. The more progress you make, the more challenging the remaining work becomes.

As places like sub-Saharan Africa increase their production of food staples, they then need to focus on distributing it to the people who need it most. Many regions lack infrastructure such as roads and bridges that can accommodate trucks carrying food.

So, someone looking to alleviate world hunger doesn't only need to focus on food, but on building roads and more secure buildings. Stable governments can help ensure fewer people go hungry. And when a country's economy grows, almost everyone is better off.

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The world produces enough calories for everyone to eat enough. So why are almost one billion people still chronically undernourished? The problem isn’t always food, it’s access. Solving world hunger means figuring out ways to get existing food to people in need.

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GIS tool useful to find information about: staple food crops, undernourishment, etc.

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Interactive graphs about what people eat around the world

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This interactive was built in conjunction with National Geographic's Future of Food series.

The data was sourced from FAOSTAT. Values reflect domestic utilization for food consumption in each country or region from 1961 to 2011. Food groupings and units of measure vary slightly from those depicted on the FAOSTAT site.

Download the data from here.

Values for China refer to FAO's "China, mainland."

*Measures for Russia preceding 1992 are represented with U.S.S.R. data.

**"Pulses" refers to lentils, beans, and peas.

This project was made possible with support from the Grace Communications Foundation.

Built and designed by Fathom Information Design

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Daily diets vary considerably around the world.

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An interactive online simulation activity

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Why doesn't Australia's tropical North produce more agriculturally?

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Why doesn't Australia's tropical North produce more agriculturally?

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Updated July 31, 2018 08:42:03

Northern Australia: it's huge, has plenty of fertile soil, and abundant rainfall. For years, it's also been touted as the "food bowl of Asia". But is that realistic?

Questioner Ian asked us: "Why isn't the tropical north, with its vast expanse of land and plenty of rainfall, producing more agriculturally? It's a great Aussie resource that seems to be neglected by the major corporations."

Curious Darwin is our story series where you ask us the questions, vote for your favourite, and we investigate. You can submit your questions on any topic at all, or vote on our next investigation.

We took a look at what more we could do, and where the roadblocks are.

So, can we do more?

Absolutely, the NT Government and industry spokespeople agree.

"There is enormous potential to significantly increase production over the coming decades," a spokesman for the NT Department of Primary Industry and Resources said in a statement.

"There is huge growth potential for beef production, significant forestry plantations that will be reaching harvest potential in the next decade, and our agricultural industries have the potential to significantly expand and increase in value into the future."

The Government shied away from putting a number on that future increase.

But it did say that as of 2015/16, the NT's agribusiness sector was worth $736 million in sales, of which 44 per cent is the cattle industry.

About $245 million, 30 per cent of the sector, is the horticulture sector, including mangoes, melons, vegetables, grapes, nursery and turf, hay, and minor crops.

There's "no doubt" NT could easily triple its current output if all the impediments were removed, said Luke Bowen from the Northern Australia Development Office.

The NT's production is worth double the Ord Irrigation Area in northern Western Australia, which produces about $50 million per year, while northern Queensland's agriculture - a bigger and more developed industry - is worth almost $5 billion per year.

Far North Queensland is the engine room of Australia's $2 billion sugar industry and its $600 million banana industry, which is why it's such a powerhouse.

It takes time

Developing the difficult terrain of northern Australia needs time, experts agreed.

The NT's horticulture industry was worth almost nothing in 1981, and has grown to almost a quarter of a billion dollars over the past 37 years through slow and considered development, says NT Farmers Association CEO Greg Owens.

"When the English first came to Australia they tried to grow things like they did in England and they almost all starved to death," he said.

"It's taken 200 years to work out growing systems for southern Australia, and they expect the tropics to do it overnight. It's not that easy."

Former mango farmer and agricultural consultant Ian Baker said Top End horticulture is based on farm-gate economics.

"People say, 'the failure of the past is due to markets'; it's not, there's always markets," he said.

"It's markets at a price that the farmer can make a profit at."

Mr Warriner agreed: "In agriculture you have to make money; it's not a charity. You have to make a profit or you'd go broke."

Just about anything can be grown in the north, said Mr Owens, but Australia has high labour costs, "so we need to get a good return for our growers rather than just grow bulk food and try to compete in Asia".

Land tenure 'a huge problem', investors scared off

Mr Baker said the biggest issue was a lot of land is tied up on pastoral leases that can't be subdivided.

David Warriner, CEO of the Livestock Exporters Association NT, agrees.

"Land tenure is a huge problem in that where you have pastoral leases, whether they're perpetual leases or crown leases, the minute you want to change what you do it triggers native title," he said.

The legal negotiations could be costly, he said, "and you have to effectively buy back the native title from the traditional owners. Which is fine but it also adds to the cost of doing business."

Some 55 per cent of the NT is Aboriginal freehold land.

"There's enormous potential ... a lot of Aboriginal land is yet to be developed significantly in any commercial way," Mr Bowen said.

Tracey Hayes is a member of the Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia, and said that the diversification of pastoral leases - allowing the land to be used for other things such as horticulture - has been tied up in red tape by the NT Government, duplicating federal regulation.

"The perverse outcome is that by doing this it actually detracts from jobs and growth in rural and regional areas, which is where Indigenous people are the workforce," she said.

Bureaucracy has had a destabilising effect on the NT's industry, Ms Hayes said: "We can be doing so much more, but boy oh boy, they make it hard.

"Capital flows along the path of least resistance, and we're making it that hard that people are looking to go elsewhere."

Mr Warriner agreed: "Those that have invested here might have had a bad experience, or we've actually frightened investment away," he said.

Politics plays its part

Northern Australia is only represented by 10 seats in the Federal House of Representatives, of 221 national seats.

"There's a big problem in that the south-eastern voter has an enormous amount of political clout ... to the detriment of what's happening in the north," Mr Warriner said.

That affects everything from live exports, tree clearing, funding allocation for infrastructure, roads and tourism, and Aboriginal communities, he said.

There's also high turnover rates of governments and ministers which makes it hard to retain relationships and to keep work flowing, stakeholders say.

In the past three years the NT alone has had three Primary Industry ministers.

Ms Hayes said one of the biggest issues in the Top End was getting funding for the right critical infrastructure links, such as improving the Darwin Port and key roads.

"Our main focus is access to market and getting produce out year-round, not just being a dry season industry in the north," she said.

Geographic isolation comes at a cost

The most developed agricultural industry in the NT is cattle, which takes up 45 per cent of the land and is worth over $2 billion, making about $600 million in sales every year, Mr Warriner said.

Of the two million head of cattle in the NT, 500,000 are sold each year. The Kimberley has a herd of about 700,000, while Queensland has 10 million.

This could be grown to three million on existing lands, Ms Hayes said.

But Mr Warriner said a major impediment to producing more is geographic isolation.

"If we had five million people in Alice Springs, five million in Darwin and five million in Townsville, it would be a totally different industry," he said.

Because the NT exports the majority of its product, almost everything has to be shipped 3000 kilometres south or is sent overseas, while everything brought in is manufactured in the south-east of the country and then shipped north.

That puts a $200-$250 per tonne freighting cost on "every single thing we use or consume in our business", Mr Warriner said.

He said the NT was disadvantaged both in terms of both selling and buying, but that could be gotten around by running large businesses to improve efficiencies, particularly in the cattle and mango industries, the NT's biggest.

The rains, the rains

Another thing that's misunderstood is how the NT's huge rainfall can be harnessed, Mr Owens said.

"We've tried many times in the past to do dryland agriculture - growing crops without irrigation - and the rainfall in the north, while there might be heaps of it, is too unreliable in its timing and amount to rely on," he said.

He said farmers were working out growing systems for the region.

"Soybean, cotton, peanuts, mung beans, chick peas, they're all tropical or semi-tropical crops that can be grown if we develop those growing systems," he said.

Having quality soil and knowing how much water is available is fundamental for sustainable agricultural development, the CSIRO said.
It found that in an average year of two million gigalitres in rainfall, 15,000 GL could be used to irrigate almost 1.5 million hectares, which would increase Australia's total irrigated area by about half.
Mr Bowen said the CSIRO had also identified 17 million hectares of additional arable land across northern Australia.

"The NT would have less than 200,000 hectares of land that's actually in production or developed to any major extent, so it's a substantially large area," he said.

What about the 'food bowl of Asia'?

Mr Bowen said the term was deceptive.

"Even if we produced to our maximum potential, we'd still only produce a relatively small amount of food by world standards," he said.

It's estimated Australia currently feeds about 60 to 80 million people outside of its borders, and even if that were to double, at best we might feed 150 million, Mr Bowen said.

Given that Indonesia alone has a population of 266 million, Australia's contribution wouldn't be huge.

"Saying 'we're going to feed everybody in Asia', clearly that's not going to happen," Mr Bowen said.

"We have an opportunity to be a premium producer, producing higher-value products with values attached to them such as cleanliness, space, quality assurance that what you're eating is what it says it is and that it's going to be good for you and safe to eat.

"That's what people in our region are prepared to pay more for."

If the NT can unravel its red tape and lure investors back in, that may just take off.

Topics: rural, government-and-politics, business-economics-and-finance, agricultural-policy, agribusiness, horticulture, darwin-0800, nt, australia, broome-6725, wa, cairns-4870, qld

First posted July 31, 2018 06:38:19

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Why doesn't the tropical north produce more agriculturally?

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Northern Australia: it's huge, has plenty of fertile soil, and abundant rainfall. For years, it's also been touted as the food bowl of Asia. But is that realistic? We take a look at how much the industry could grow and what the roadblocks are.

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A prime example of sustainable land use and management in our own backyard.

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The Food Forest is a 15 hectare property in Gawler where we grow over 160 varieties of organic fruit, nuts, grains, vegetables and timber. We run courses (including a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC)), tours, sell fortnightly at the Adelaide Showground Farmers Market and provide a wide range of fact sheets and learning clips on everything from designing your property to growing fig trees and building with strawbale.

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Food Security Data for Onkaparinga Council SA

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Food Security Data for Onkaparinga Council SA

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Access to affordable, nutritionally adequate food contributes to the primary wellbeing of our communities. A household is considered food secure when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle.

Food insecurity

As part of the SAMSS, participants were asked 'in the last 12 months, were there any times that you ran out of food and you couldn't afford to buy more'? The proportion answering 'yes' to this question have been defined as those reporting food insecurity.

In the 2014-15 SAMSS assessment of food insecurity a total of 827 respondents were interviewed for the City of Onkaparinga and a total of 7167 South Australians (30).

Data analysis

In 2014-15 the proportion of respondents in the City of Onkaparinga that reported food insecurity was 3.9 per cent, which was slightly higher than the proportion of South Australian respondents reporting food insecurity (2.7 per cent) (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Proportion of respondents reporting food insecurity, City of Onkaparinga and South Australia, 2008-09 to 2014-15

Source: South Australian Monitoring and Surveillance System
(30)

Trend analysis

The proportion of respondents who reported food insecurity in 2014-15 was 3.4 per cent less than that reported by City of Onkaparinga respondents in 2008-09 (Figure 1). The proportion of South Australian respondents reporting food insecurity decreased by a much larger 31.1 per cent from 2008-09 to 2014-15. Over time, there has been a tendency for reported food insecurity to be slightly higher in the City of Onkaparinga compared with South Australia.

Policy implications

While there has been a reduction in the proportion of residents reporting food insecurity, the City of Onkaparinga will continue to advocate to government and non-government organisations to respond to the economic factors such as employment and mortgage stress, together with social factors such as illness or family breakdown, which could potentially affect food insecurity. The implementations of a number of food and community wellbeing initiatives by the City of Onkaparinga, including Magic Harvest and Oz Food Harvest, have possibly contributed to relieve the effects of food insecurity within the community.

The City of Onkaparinga is also developing a strategic approach to mapping a regional response to food health and security with Flinders University, which will determine what level of food insecurity exists amongst groups in our communities, food health programs offered and potential areas that could be utilised for growing food.

Fruit and vegetable consumption

According to the Australian Dietary Guidelines the recommended adult daily intake of fruit is two serves every day, and daily vegetable intake is five serves every day (36).

As part of the SAMSS, participants aged 16 years and over were asked 'how many serves of fruit/vegetables do you eat each day'? In the 2014-15 SAMSS assessment of daily fruit consumption, 696 respondents aged 16 and over were interviewed for the City of Onkaparinga and a total of 5788 South Australians (30). For the assessment of daily vegetable consumption, 693 respondents aged 16 and over were interviewed for the City of Onkaparinga, and a total of 5761 South Australians (30).

Data analysis

In 2014-15 only 46.6 per cent of City of Onkaparinga respondents were consuming the recommended two serves of fruit per day, the majority of respondents were not meeting the recommended daily intake (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Proportion of respondents by daily fruit consumption, City of Onkaparinga, 2008-09 to 2014-15

Source: South Australian Monitoring and Surveillance System
(30)

Similarly, in 2014-15 South Australians were also not meeting dietary guidelines for daily fruit intake, with only 44.9 per cent of respondents consuming two or more serves of fruit (Figure 3). In 2014-15, the proportion of City of Onkaparinga residents consuming the recommended daily intake of fruit was 1.6 per cent higher than that observed for South Australia. However, there was greater proportion of respondents in the City of Onkaparinga who were not consuming any fruit, when compared with the rest of South Australia (1.2 per cent more).

Figure 3: Proportion of respondents by daily fruit consumption, South Australia, 2008-09 to 2014-15

Source: South Australian Monitoring and Surveillance System
(30)
Vegetable consumption
In 2014-15 only just over 12 per cent of City of Onkaparinga respondents were consuming the recommended five serves of vegetables per day, the majority of respondents were consuming 2-4 serves of vegetables per day (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Proportion of respondents by daily vegetable consumption, City of Onkaparinga, 2008-09 to 2014-15
Source: South Australian Monitoring and Surveillance System
(30)

In 2014-15 the proportion of South Australians consuming the recommended vegetable intake was 10.8 per cent, which was 1.6 per cent lower than that observed for the City of Onkaparinga (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Proportion of respondents by daily vegetable consumption, South Australia, 2008-09 to 2014-15
Source: South Australian Monitoring and Surveillance System
(30)

Trend analysis

In 2014-15 there was an increase of 4.7 per cent in the proportion of respondents in the City of Onkaparinga consuming the recommended daily fruit intake compared with 2008-09 (Figure 2). However, in 2014-15 there was actually a slight decrease in the proportion of South Australians consuming the recommended daily intake of fruit consumption when compared with 2008-09 (0.6 per cent less) (Figure 3). Between 2008-09 and 2014-15 there was an increase in the proportion of City of Onkaparinga respondents who did not consume any fruit of 24 per cent (Figure 2). In contrast, the proportion of South Australian respondents who reported not consuming any fruit remained the same between 2008-09 and 2014-15 (Figure 3).
Vegetable consumption
In 2014-15 there were 22.0 per cent more respondents in the City of Onkaparinga consuming the recommended daily vegetable intake compared with 2008-09 (Figure 4). There was however, an increase in the proportion of City of Onkaparinga respondents who reported consuming one serve of vegetables or less (increase of 23.6 per cent) and no vegetables at all (increase of 134.1 per cent) between 2008-09 and 2014-15. There was also a decrease in the proportion of respondents consuming 2-4 serves of vegetables, by 10.8 per cent.

The proportion of South Australians consuming the recommended daily intake of vegetables in 2014-15 only slightly increased, by 3.9 per cent, when compared with 2008-09 (Figure 5). Similar to that observed for the City of Onkaparinga respondents, there was also an increase in the proportion of South Australian respondents who reported only consuming one serve of vegetables or less (increase of 22.2 per cent) and no change in the proportion who consumed no vegetables between 2008-09 and 2014-15. There was also a decrease in the proportion of South Australian respondents consuming 2-4 serves of vegetables, by 6.0 per cent.

Policy implications

While there have been positive trend outcomes over the last seven years, this data still indicates that a greater proportion of residents need to be consuming the recommended daily intake of fruit and vegetables. The City of Onkaparinga has always been committed to increasing community awareness about the benefits of healthy eating and supporting the community through community led initiatives to ensure residents are accessing fresh, healthy food. Some of the current healthy eating initiatives the City of Onkaparinga continue to facilitate and support include Community Gardens, Magic Harvest, Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food Pop-up Kitchen in Ramsay Place and the legacy of the previously implemented programs Obesity Prevention and Lifestyle (OPAL) and the Healthy Active Lifestyles Onkaparinga (HALO).

The City of Onkaparinga will continue to develop and implement healthy eating programs run through schools, communities, neighbourhood and youth centres, and to partner with businesses and education providers to develop and implement programs that teach skills and knowledge to improve residents with food purchasing and preparation behaviours to increase self-sufficiency and healthy food choices. Further initiatives may need to be implemented, including improved advocacy methods to better engage all levels of government to reinstate new, or further develop healthy active lifestyle programs similar to OPAL and HALO, to continue to address the Community Plan Objective 2.1 Healthy, Active Lifestyles and increase the proportion of residents eating the recommended daily fruit and vegetable intake.
This indicator is linked to other strategies, plans and targets outlined below:

Government of South Australia South Australia's Strategic Plan Targets:

78. Healthy South Australians: increase the healthy life expectancy of South Australians.
79. Aboriginal healthy life expectancy: increase the average healthy life expectancy of Aboriginal South Australians.

Other State Strategies

* Right Bite: Health Food and Drink Supply Strategy for South Australian Schools and Preschools
* South Australian Premium Food and Wine From Our Clean Environment, Action Plan Update 2015
* Eat Well Be Active Strategy for South Australia 2011-16

National Strategies:

* National Food Plan: Our food future 2013
* Safe Food Australia: A Guide to the Food Safety Standards

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community wellbeing monitor - food security

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Access to affordable, nutritionally adequate food contributes to the primary wellbeing of our communities. A household is considered food secure when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle.

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An overview of the extensive food that is grown and produced right here in SA.

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Creating your own exclusive version of an Eat Local SA platter for a spot of Spring entertaining couldn't be easier. Start with a selection of cured, smoked, air-dried and fresh smallgoods from San Jose and you too will have a winner on your hands.

Or you could try this tasty recipe, provided especially for Eat Local SA for us by San Jose Smallgoods.

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Creating your own exclusive version of an Eat Local SA platter for a spot of Spring entertaining couldn't be easier. Start with a selection of cured, smoked, air-dried and fresh smallgoods from San Jose and you too will have a winner on your hands.

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Northern Adelaide Plains is 'South Australia's Salad Bowl'

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Northern Adelaide Plains is 'South Australia's Salad Bowl'

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Northern Adelaide Plains   Salad Bowl of South Australia