Agriculture and Food Security

Boys walked on Sunday with sacks of rice in front of a damaged church in Jaro, where, one official said, no aid has arrived.  Jes Aznar for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Keith Bradsher - November 17, 2013

JARO, Philippines — Even as a major international aid effort has begun to take hold around the coastal city of Tacloban, the situation grimly differs just a few miles inland, where large numbers of injured or sick people in interior villages shattered by Typhoon Haiyan more than a week ago have received no assistance.

Well away from the coastal storm surge areas where most of the death toll occurred on the Philippines island of Leyte, the picture is still one of utter devastation — in this case from Haiyan’s record winds.

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submitted by Nguyen Huu Ninh

cnn.com - by Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks - November 10, 2013

Tacloban, Philippines (CNN) -- No building in this coastal city of 200,000 residents appears to have escaped damage from Super Typhoon Haiyan.

earth-policy.org

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity

Chapter 7. Grain Yields Starting to Plateau

by Lester R. Brown

From the beginning of agriculture until the mid-twentieth century, growth in the world grain harvest came almost entirely from expanding the cultivated area. Rises in land productivity were too slow to be visible within a single generation. It is only within the last 60 years or so that rising yields have replaced area expansion as the principal source of growth in world grain production.

Chapter 7. Grain Yields Starting to Plateau
http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep/fpepch7

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep

( ALSO SEE - http://resiliencesystem.org/chapter-4-food-or-fuel-full-planet-empty-plates-new-geopolitics-food-scarcity )

Thai soldiers wearing biohazard suits take part as cleaning operations continue at Ao Prao Beach on Koh Samet, Rayong July 31, 2013. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

reuters.com - by Amy Sawitta Lefevre - July 30, 2013

(Reuters) - An oil spill that has blackened beaches at a Thai holiday island was having an extreme impact on tourism and could spread to the coast of the mainland and affect the fishing industry, officials and an environmental group said on Tuesday.

Tourists were pouring off the island of Koh Samet, 230 km (142 miles) southeast of Bangkok, while soldiers and volunteers in white bio-hazard suits struggled to clear black oily sludge off the white sand.

"We're working to move visitors to other locations if they want to move," Tourism Minister Somsak Phurisisak told reporters.

"I'm very concerned, I didn't think this spill would impact tourism in such an extreme way."

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