Word: farmland
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...Guifu's farmland is still above water, and for that he can thank China's environmental movement. For years power companies have longed to dam the Nu River, which flows flat and olive drab below the fields where Yu and his family earn $1,200 a year growing corn, rice and strawberries. So far they haven't succeeded. "That river hasn't changed in my lifetime," says Yu, 50, as he rolls a cigarette and squishes his bare feet in a soft embankment. "But I don?t know what will happen next...
...Such aid is a stopgap solution to problems that have been brewing for years, but have only recently gone critical due to several complex factors: soaring oil prices; massive amounts of farmland diverted into producing biofuels; and crop failures from freak weather, including droughts in Australia and Europe and last month's cyclone in Burma (Myanmar). At the same time, millions of people in China and India can now afford to buy more food and eat more grain-fed meat, causing world food demand to soar...
There are several causes underlying the emerging crisis, experts say. One is the savage flooding North Korea experienced in August of last year, which devastated large swaths of farmland, thus limiting the North's own ability to produce grain. "The current balance between grain requirements and supply in the North is more precarious than at any time since the '90s," says Noland. Political tension, particularly between the North and new South Korean government of Lee Myung Bak, is also playing a role. Lee, a month after his inauguration earlier this year, decided he would continue Seoul's humanitarian assistance...
...fires, which have been raging out of control for two weeks now, have consumed some 80,000 hectares (300 square miles) of farmland on the giant river islands beyond the capital. Most local media reporting agree that the fires are caused by indiscriminate burning by cattle farmers who are opening up new land for grazing because existing farmland has been turned over to more profitable soy production. The area has a cattle population of some one million animals...
...Zeigler blames a lack of investment in agriculture. In much of Asia, rice farming remains small-scale and inefficient. In Thailand, for example, average yields are less than half that of either Chinese or U.S. farms. At the same time, Asia's rapid urbanization has gobbled up fecund farmland. In Vietnam's Bac Ninh province, 12 miles (19 km) from downtown Hanoi, shimmering emerald paddy fields are now bisected by a four-lane highway. Not far from where rice farmer Nguyen Thi Lan stands weeding her fields in calf-deep muck, a Singapore-Vietnamese joint venture will soon build...