Read Online 7 Billion by National Geographic - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: National Geographic
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fierce instinct for survival combined with a willingness to put up with conditions the rest of us might not.
Abdullah Abu Sayeed, a literacy advocate, explains it this way: âOne day I was driving on one of the busiest streets in Dhakaâthousands of vehicles, all of them in a hurryâand I almost ran over a little boy, no more than five or six years old, who was fast asleep on the road divider in the middle of traffic. Cars were whizzing by, passing just inches from his head. But he was at peace, taking a nap in some of the craziest traffic in the world. Thatâs Bangladesh. We are used to precarious circumstances, and our expectations are very, very low. Itâs why we can adapt to just about anything.â
Chapter 5: Food Ark
BY CHARLES SIEBERT
Charles Siebert is the author of The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals. Jim Richardson documented the importance of soil to our food supply in the September 2008 issue.
In China 90 percent of the wheat varieties cultivated just a century ago have disappeared. Experts estimate that we have lost more than half of the worldâs food varieties over the past century. As for the 8,000 known livestock breeds, 1,600 are endangered or already extinct.
All the food crops we eat today were developed and diversified about 10,000 years ago in these relatively few regions, first identified by the great Russian botanist Nikolay Vavilov in the early 20th century.
Why is this a problem? Because if disease or future climate change decimates one of the handful of plants and animals weâve come to depend on to feed our growing planet, we might desperately need one of those varieties weâve let go extinct. The precipitous loss of the worldâs wheat diversity is a particular cause for concern. One of wheatâs oldest adversaries, Puccinia graminis, a fungus known as stem rust, is spreading across the globe. The pestilenceâs current incarnation is a virulent and fast-mutating strain dubbed Ug99 because it was first identified in Uganda in 1999. It then spread to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. By 2007 it had jumped the Persian Gulf into Iran. Scientists predict that Ug99 will soon make its way into the breadbaskets of India and Pakistan, then infiltrate Russia, China, andâwith a mere hitch of a spore on an airplane passengerâs shoeâour hemisphere as well.
Roughly 90 percent of the worldâs wheat is defenseless against Ug99. Were the fungus to come to the U.S., an estimated one billion dollarsâ worth of wheat would be at risk. Scientists project that in Asia and Africa alone the portion of wheat in imminent danger would leave one billion people without their primary food source. A significant humanitarian crisis is inevitable, according to Rick Ward of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University.
The worldâs population is expected to reach seven billion people this year. By 2045 it could grow to nine billion. Some experts say weâll need to double our food production to keep up with demand as emerging economies consume more meat and dairy. Given the added challenges posed by climate change and constantly mutating diseases like Ug99, it is becoming ever more urgent to find ways to increase food yield without exacerbating the genetic anemia coursing through industrialized agricultureâs ostensible abundance. The world has become increasingly dependent upon technology-driven, one-size-fits-all solutions to its problems. Yet the best hope for securing foodâs future may depend on our ability to preserve the locally cultivated foods of the past.
Â
IT TOOK MORE THAN 10,000 YEARS of domestication for humans to create the vast biodiversity in our food supply that weâre now watching ebb away. Selectively breeding a wild plant or animal species for certain desirable traits began as a fitful process of trial and error motivated by that age-old imperative: hunger. Wild
Abdullah Abu Sayeed, a literacy advocate, explains it this way: âOne day I was driving on one of the busiest streets in Dhakaâthousands of vehicles, all of them in a hurryâand I almost ran over a little boy, no more than five or six years old, who was fast asleep on the road divider in the middle of traffic. Cars were whizzing by, passing just inches from his head. But he was at peace, taking a nap in some of the craziest traffic in the world. Thatâs Bangladesh. We are used to precarious circumstances, and our expectations are very, very low. Itâs why we can adapt to just about anything.â
Chapter 5: Food Ark
BY CHARLES SIEBERT
Charles Siebert is the author of The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals. Jim Richardson documented the importance of soil to our food supply in the September 2008 issue.
In China 90 percent of the wheat varieties cultivated just a century ago have disappeared. Experts estimate that we have lost more than half of the worldâs food varieties over the past century. As for the 8,000 known livestock breeds, 1,600 are endangered or already extinct.
All the food crops we eat today were developed and diversified about 10,000 years ago in these relatively few regions, first identified by the great Russian botanist Nikolay Vavilov in the early 20th century.
Why is this a problem? Because if disease or future climate change decimates one of the handful of plants and animals weâve come to depend on to feed our growing planet, we might desperately need one of those varieties weâve let go extinct. The precipitous loss of the worldâs wheat diversity is a particular cause for concern. One of wheatâs oldest adversaries, Puccinia graminis, a fungus known as stem rust, is spreading across the globe. The pestilenceâs current incarnation is a virulent and fast-mutating strain dubbed Ug99 because it was first identified in Uganda in 1999. It then spread to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. By 2007 it had jumped the Persian Gulf into Iran. Scientists predict that Ug99 will soon make its way into the breadbaskets of India and Pakistan, then infiltrate Russia, China, andâwith a mere hitch of a spore on an airplane passengerâs shoeâour hemisphere as well.
Roughly 90 percent of the worldâs wheat is defenseless against Ug99. Were the fungus to come to the U.S., an estimated one billion dollarsâ worth of wheat would be at risk. Scientists project that in Asia and Africa alone the portion of wheat in imminent danger would leave one billion people without their primary food source. A significant humanitarian crisis is inevitable, according to Rick Ward of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University.
The worldâs population is expected to reach seven billion people this year. By 2045 it could grow to nine billion. Some experts say weâll need to double our food production to keep up with demand as emerging economies consume more meat and dairy. Given the added challenges posed by climate change and constantly mutating diseases like Ug99, it is becoming ever more urgent to find ways to increase food yield without exacerbating the genetic anemia coursing through industrialized agricultureâs ostensible abundance. The world has become increasingly dependent upon technology-driven, one-size-fits-all solutions to its problems. Yet the best hope for securing foodâs future may depend on our ability to preserve the locally cultivated foods of the past.
Â
IT TOOK MORE THAN 10,000 YEARS of domestication for humans to create the vast biodiversity in our food supply that weâre now watching ebb away. Selectively breeding a wild plant or animal species for certain desirable traits began as a fitful process of trial and error motivated by that age-old imperative: hunger. Wild
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