Word: soils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unsustainable development. Just 15 cash crops such as corn, wheat and rice provide 90% of the world's food, but planting and replanting the same crops strips fields of nutrients and makes them more vulnerable to pests. Slash-and-burn planting techniques and overreliance on pesticides further degrade the soil...
...National Agricultural Research Organization of Uganda has developed corn varieties that are more resistant to disease and thrive in soil that is poor in nitrogen. Agronomists in Kenya are developing a sweet potato that wards off viruses. Also in the works are drought-tolerant, disease-defeating and vitamin-fortified forms of such crops as sorghum and cassava--hardly staples in the West, but essentials elsewhere in the world. The key, explains economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, is not to dictate food policy from the West but to help the developing world build its own biotech...
...about two-thirds of the fresh water consumed. A report prepared for the summit thus endorses the "more crop per drop" approach, which calls for more efficient irrigation techniques, planting of drought- and salt-tolerant crop varieties that require less water and better monitoring of growing conditions, such as soil humidity levels. Improving water-delivery systems would also help, reducing the amount that is lost en route to the people...
...past year, Chicago's City Hall, a 1911 Classical Revival building, has been topped by a "green roof"--a 20,000-sq.-ft. garden that was planted as a climate-control mechanism. Built from a blend of compost, mulch and spongelike materials that hold water more effectively than regular soil, the low-maintenance garden of 20,000 plantings is intended to reduce City Hall's air-conditioning and heating costs by as much as $6,000 each year...
Second, some environments are more fragile than others, making some societies more prone to collapse than others. Fragility varies even within the same country: for instance, some parts of the U.S., including Southern California, where I live, are especially at risk from low rainfall and salinization of soil from agriculture that is dependent on irrigation--the same problems that overwhelmed the Anasazi. Some nations occupy more fragile environments than do others. It's no accident that a list of the world's most environmentally devastated and/or overpopulated countries resembles a list of the world's current political tinderboxes. Both lists...