8 MILLION ACRES of farm in China now TOO polluted for food.

[Mech]

An official from the Chinese government announced Monday that approximately 3.33 million hectares, or 8 million acres, of China’s farmland is now too polluted to grow crops, according to a Reuters report from Beijing.

China’s Vice Minister of Land and Resources Wang Shiyuan reportedly told a news conference that current farming on the now-too-contaminated land — roughly the size of Belgium — will be halted and rehabilitated in order to ensure food safety. It was unclear late Monday whether food that had already been grown on that land would be sought out or recalled.

“These areas cannot continue farming,” Wang said, noting that the Ministry of Environmental Protection had deemed all of the 8 million acres as having “moderate to severe pollution.”

The Chinese government has said that the country needs at least 120 million hectares of arable land to ensure it is able to meet the vastly populated country’s food needs. Though China started 2013 with a strong 135 million hectares of arable land, contamination — paired with recent efforts to convert farmland to forests, grasslands and wetlands — has caused the amount of stable cultivated land to drop to 120 million hectares, Wang said. Wang also said the country is committed to spending “tens of billions of yuan” a year for projects aimed at rehabilitating polluted land.

High levels of contamination caused by pollution are nothing new for the people of China, who have been caught in somewhat of a pollution storm in the last year. A major source of the country’s pollution is its 2,300 (and growing) dirty coal plants, which helped Beijing in January experience its worst air pollution on record — levels of particulate matter topped out at 723 micrograms per cubic meter. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers 25 or less micrograms per cubic meter ideal for human health. Above 300 is considered hazardous.

In October, air pollution nearly shut down the entire city of Harbin, and in December, extreme air pollution forced children and the elderly in Shanghai behind closed doors and windows for at least seven days. Later that month, a clinic dedicated to treating victims of China’s notorious smog opened its doors in Sichuan Provence, southwest China.

SOURCE: China Says 8 Million Acres Of Farmland Now Too Polluted For Food | ThinkProgress

 

[liall]

good more land for the cities to expand

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Some scientist believe it is close to 60 million. Ouch!

Associated Press:
Chinese official: Soil pollution hurts farming

 

[Chronos]

good more land for the cities to expand

Wut?

@Mech Long time no see man. Don't see you around Kerala corner anymore

 

[liall]

Wut?

@Mech Long time no see man. Don't see you around Kerala corner anymore

you cant raise pigs on that land but you can obviously make buildings

 

[Chronos]

you cant raise pigs on that land but you can obviously make buildings

That houses people who are designed to consume like Pigs.

Welcome to Consumer capitalism folks!

 

[Mech]

Wut?

@Mech Long time no see man. Don't see you around Kerala corner anymore

Been busy
Work load is starting to get intense down here.

 

[Chronos]

Been busy
Work load is starting to get intense down here.

Aww,

You missed a bunch of pages of fights between our resident Nasranis (Meant to be a joke)

 

[Genesis]

in other news, 600 millions more can now AFFORD food.

 

[eazzy]

^ True.

 

[tranquilium]

Well, despite that China is producing more food than the next three country combined, more arable farm is still more preferable. Though didn't yesterday's news report says that China actually has more farm land right now than 1996?

 

[Fsjal]

China produces way more food than India.

And let's not forget that China has a pig reserve. Although, that isn't gonna help much.

 

[Sanchez]

That houses people who are designed to consume like Pigs.

Welcome to Consumer capitalism folks!

Hei, Indian! Don't forget Chinese have much longer life expectancy than any big mouthed Indian. We also consume pigs bought from Europe and chickens from US. Pls no worries, you short living creature!

 

[Mech]

Last week, a pleased Shanghai doctor who performed a successful cataract operation gingerly led his patient to the window for him to see the city's skyline for the first time, but instead of a delightful cry, the patient batted his eyelids several times and began to shout at the doctor for botching the job.

That is one of the dozens of jokes flying around the country's social media as Shanghai and more than 100 other major mainland cities were enveloped in the choking and hazardous smog last week.

Visibility in some eastern cities was reduced to less than 50 metres and to less than five metres in the worst hit places, where PM2.5 concentrations hit 500 micrograms per cubic metre. The World Health Organisation's recommended level for the pollutant is 25mcg per cubic metre.

To be sure, air quality in China typically plummets in winter months as the heating systems in cities north of the Yangtze River depend on coal. But the scale and severity of the smog last week was the worst in recent memory as it covered not only the northern cities like Beijing but also a large number of cities south of the Yangtze which do not burn coal for heating, including Shanghai, Nanjing , and other parts of the Yangtze River delta.

According to the national observatory, 104 cities in more than 20 provinces last Friday reported PM2.5 readings at more than 300, classified as severe, the highest in the six-level rating system.

The authorities blamed the lack of wind, coal burning in the north, exhaust emissions from the massive number of cars, and industrial pollution from the large concentration of steel and cement factories in the Yangtze River delta. But officials failed to explain that, given that none of the above factors is new, why was the smog last week the most severe in recent years.

Fortunately for tens of millions of suffering mainlanders, relief seems to be on the way as the national observatory forecast strong winds to blow across much of the country starting from yesterday afternoon.

It is sad to note that despite the severity of the smog and its hazardous impact on people's lives, neither the central government leaders nor the officials from those affected cities have come out publicly to apologise and discuss ways to address the issue.

Unfortunately, it has become one of those issues in China that affects everyone badly but for which no one is willing to take any responsibility.

After 35 years of double-digit growth rates, which turned the country's economy into the world's second largest, mainlanders are now suffering fully from the negative impact.

The smog is getting worse daily and reaching almost all corners of the country. Earlier this year, even Hainan , well known for its blue skies and sandy beaches, was covered in heavy smog.

More than 70 per cent of the country's rivers and lakes are heavily polluted and deemed unfit even for animals to drink and much of the country's underground water was also equally polluted.

Media are regularly reporting on diseases linked directly to pollution. Last month it emerged that an eight-year-old girl who lived beside a busy road in Jiangsu had become the mainland's youngest lung cancer patient. Her doctor was quoted as saying her illness was the result of her breathing in pollutants from car exhaust fumes.

Many more mainlanders now say that they want to migrate to other countries and foreign businessmen refuse to relocate to the mainland partly because of the pollution.

The new leadership under President Xi Jinping has shown more willingness to tackle pollution as it tries to slow the breakneck economic growth.

But the efforts have been half-hearted at best. Last month, the Communist Party held its landmark meeting and unveiled its blueprint which was supposed to bring the country's development to a new level.

It indeed contained some exciting grand goals and slogans including allowing the market forces to play "the decisive" role in the economy and boosting mainlanders' living standards. But it contains little on how to tackle environmental degradation.

Last week, photos comparing today's masked mainlanders wallowing in thick smog to the Londoners facing the similar situation in the 1950s and 1960s went viral on the internet. The smog killed thousands of people in Britain before the authorities there took decisive steps to introduce the Clean Air Act to bring pollution under control.

It is time that the mainland leadership learnt from those lessons and takes steps to introduce China's own Clean Air Act. After all, what good is achieving Xi's Chinese "dream of rejuvenation" if people cannot breathe the air or drink the water.

Source: It's as clear as day - China needs its own Clean Air Act | South China Morning Post

 

[vicky sen]

Didnt know it was this bad!!