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The End of Plenty

The End of Plenty

©2009 John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

Today we present seven images by John Stanmeyer from the June 2009 issue of National Geographic Magazine.

Above: Skilled fingers separate good seed from bad at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Philippines. “Miracle rice” varieties developed here in the 1960s doubled yields in Asia. Further growth has stalled since the mid-1990s, as investment in agriculture has declined. “Governments thought we’d won the war on food security,” says IRRI Director General Robert Zeigler. “So they put money elsewhere.”

Cover: ©2009 National Geographic

©2009 John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

Brazil: A mountain of soybeans rises in the hold of a cargo ship bound for China, where they will be crushed for cooking oil and animal feed. Though China has managed to meet most of the food needs of its growing population, its imports of soybeans have soared.

©2009 John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

Egypt: Stung by soaring food prices, angry Egyptians throng a kiosk selling government-subsidized bread near the Great Pyramid at Giza. Across the globe, rising demand and flat supplies have rekindled the old debate over whether production can keep up with population.

©2009 John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

China: Every imaginable cut of pork is on display at a busy butcher stall in Guangzhou, a sign of prosperity in China’s growing cities. A rare treat for most Chinese just a couple of decades ago, pork is showing up on more dinner tables, though the United States’ per capita meat consumption is still more than twice as high. China now raises about half the world’s pigs and must import grain to feed them.

©2009 John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

India: Workers in India’s fertile Punjab pull an overstuffed load of rice stalks to a farm where they will be used as animal feed. High-yielding varieties, along with subsidized fertilizer and irrigation, have helped India stave off famine for decades.

©2009 John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

India: A hidden cost of the green revolution is evident in the plight of Gurjiwan Singh: Doctors say his birth defects are the result of pesticide poisoning. Supported by U.S. foundations in the mid-1960s, the use of high-yielding seeds, intensive irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides turned Singh’s Punjab homeland into India’s breadbasket, but left depleted, poisoned aquifers in its wake.

©2009 John Stanmeyer/National Geographic

Philippines: Continuing a 2,000-year-old tradition, women harvest rice by hand on the Banaue terraces in the Philippines. Even record harvests haven’t been able to support the nation’s 90 million people, forcing it to become the leading rice importer.

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  1. Food security has been an issue because we fail to be serious with the basic of ecology. We have multiplied our population many many times yet have never expanded our food production as much. So much more, we have not been serious enough to protect our water sources, forest system, land fertility and never caring to be serious enough in how to put back the nutrients into the soil.
    We are more concerned about money and becoming rich thinking that when we have money we can buy everything…it is never true…money can buy only what is sold and will be sold… we can only sell what we produce and can produce..sooner when there is nothing produced, there will be nothing to sell, and money cannot be eaten.

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