Another proposal: guaranteeing a minimum size for food crop fields to ward off avaricious cadres.
Seventy-five per cent of the food crop varieties we once grew have disappeared from our fields in the last 100 years.
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Typically, officials reduce a family's "food crop" land and increase the family responsibility portion, over which they can exert more control.
When the next food crop is planted, it benefits from the nutrients and improved physical properties of the soil that the trees have provided.
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We all need to eat after all and it takes quite some time, many months at least, to plant and harvest a new food crop.
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The method might be the key to the widescale production of fuel from algae, which is thought to be the better option over making it from land-based crops such as soya and corn, since the yields are much greater and there is no competition with food-crop production, and provide a real alternative to a globalized world that is utterly dependent on supplies of imported crude oil.
There are no comparable examples of any GMO crop or food presenting such health challenges.
Getting approval for any transgenic crop or food is like running a torturous gauntlet, both arduous and bureaucratic.
In its November 2012 crop and food security assessment, the U.N. predicted a gap of 207, 000 tons of food this year in North Korea.
If the USDA or a court determines that a biotech seed or crop or food does not pass environmental or health muster, it will be pulled from the market and banned.
The report does not give an answer but some economists have made the attempt, variously citing demand from China and other developing nations, the diversion of crop use from food to fuel oil, and production constraints.
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We have a bigger crop coming and so food prices, the big villain in inflation, should start to fall.
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But DNA from the biotech crop was found in food products intended for humans, causing a major scandal and an expensive recall.
If the mega-sized farms of the current modern factory farm system were suddenly beset by a shortage of modern petro-based pesticides and herbicides, those farms would all suffer massive crop failures, and food would become scarce all around the world in less than two years.
This meant she was unable to use the fertilizer, which led to a poor harvest of her maize crop, which meant less food for her children.
Algae at least can be grown, with sufficient engineering, on a large scale that does not require prime crop land in competition with growing food crops (as rules out conventional biofuel strategies beyond grants from governments and the European Union), and there is no demand for freshwater since saline water does even better to promote the growth of certain highly oil-yielding strains.
"There are implications to dedicating more and more crop land to fuel production rather than food production, " said Tyson Clocum of the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen.
But as they begin to crop up on fine restaurant menus and luxury food websites, they are gaining foodie insider cred all the time.
Thanks to new crop hybrids, irrigation and other technological advances, global food production has consistently risen despite the vagaries of weather patterns.
Food processors do not have to commit themselves to a price until the crop comes in.
Sudan is letting investors export 70% of the crop, even though it is the recipient of the largest food-aid operation in the world.
Monsoon rain levels largely determine India's crop output and are considered among the most important factors in controlling food inflation.
"Anything that reduces food miles and other carbon emissions linked to food production is normally a positive thing, " said Dr Nicola Canon, lecturer in crop sciences at the UK's Royal Agricultural College.
But the greatest boon of all to food security and to the environment in the long term may be the ability of new crop varieties to tolerate periods of drought and other water-related stresses.
Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust laid out a compelling case to do more to protect endangered food species in advent of climate change, especially in South Asia, where the environment is anticipated to be most fragile.
The plan is have 500 varieties of crop seeds in the facility, a backup system or Doomsday Vault for the world's food.
Meanwhile, the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change states that "declining crop yields ... could leave hundreds of millions without the ability to produce or purchase sufficient food", reports The Food Magazine.
With the crop losses from these most recent storms, Haiti will have little choice but to remain heavily dependent on food imports for at least another year.
Next-generation GM crops could boost food grown, cut pesticide use, make crops more resistant to droughts like the one that crushed the US corn crop last year, even create crops that fertilize themselves from the air.
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