Donna Davis 10-11-2013 Natural Disasters Report On Farming, GMO and Deforestation:

We always assume that our food is grown in a field or in a garden and is being brought to us by pure growing of the product from a seed that we get at a local store. Well now people are injecting foods with a similar DNA or multiple DNAs to produce foods that we eat. We can find these products in our grocery stores and at flea markets. Surprise not all foods at the flea market (local growers) is coming from a field that they grew on their own. More and more they are being grown in a lab that has been created by the grower and can be in the house. As the worlds population continues to grow exponentially, so does the amount of farmland needed to provide sufficient food. According to the UN food and Agriculture Organization, over 40 percent of Earths surface is now comprised of agricultural lands, and a large portion of these lands were once covered by forests. Much of Europe, for example, was once covered with dense temperate forests, but over time population growth-driven deforestation has led to more farm land. According to Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, two billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere every year from deforestation. That destruction amounts to 50 million acres destroyed annually, much of which occurring in the Amazon rain forest. Here, the regional cycle of evaporation and condensation has been disrupted, raising the possibility of the remaining forest becoming a savannah. Furthermore, because the rain forest is shrinking, its carbon-dioxide absorbing capacities are being diminished, which in turn means more of the heat-trapping gas is reaching the upper atmosphere, causing global temperatures to rise. Fertilizers used in farming have also had far-reaching effects. Their use has injected vast amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous into regional ecosystems. Wired Science reports that 120 million tons of

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nitrogen are removed from the atmosphere each year and 20 million tons of phosphorous is mined from the ground in order to produce fertilizer to be used for farming. These practices add a tremendous amount of nitrogen and phosphorus to the biosphere than would occur naturally. Runoff from farmland often carries large amounts of fertilizer into rivers and streams which eventually drain into the sea. The increase of these elements to ocean ecosystems has been detrimental and is fueling rapidly growing marine dead zones. The clearing of tropical forests across the Earth has been occurring on a large scale basis for many centuries. This process, known as deforestation, involves the cutting down, burning, and damaging of forests. The loss of tropical rain forest is more profound than merely destruction of beautiful areas. If the current rate of deforestation continues, the world's rain forests will vanish within 100 years-causing unknown effects on global climate and eliminating the majority of plant and animal species on the planet. Deforestation is the permanent destruction of indigenous forests and woodlands. The term does not include the removal of industrial forests such as plantations of gums or pines. Deforestation has resulted in the reduction of indigenous forests to four-fifths of their pre-agricultural area. Indigenous forests now cover 21% of the earth's land surface. Of great concern is the rate at which deforestation is occurring. Currently, 12 million hectares of forests are cleared annually - an area 1,3 times the size of KwaZulu/Natal! Almost all of this deforestation occurs in the moist forests and open woodlands of the tropics. At this rate all moist tropical forest could be lost by the year 2050, except for isolated areas in Amazonia, the Zaire basin, as well as a few protected areas within reserves and parks. Some countries such as Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Costa Rica, and Sri Lanka are likely to lose all their tropical forests by the year 2010 if no conservation

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steps are taken. Most of the clearing is done for agricultural purposes-grazing cattle, planting crops. Poor farmers chop down a small area (typically a few acres) and burn the tree trunks-a process called Slash and Burn agriculture. Intensive, or modern, agriculture occurs on a much larger scale, sometimes deforesting several square miles at a time. Large cattle pastures often replace rain forest to grow beef for the world market. Commercial logging is another common form of deforestation, cutting trees for sale as timber or pulp. Logging can occur selectively-where only the economically valuable species are cut-or by clearcutting, where all the trees are cut. Commercial logging uses heavy machinery, such as bulldozers, road graders, and log skidders, to remove cut trees and build roads, which is just as damaging to a forest overall as the chainsaws are to the individual trees. The causes of deforestation are very complex. A competitive global economy drives the need for money in economically challenged tropical countries. At the national level, governments sell logging concessions to raise money for projects, to pay international debt, or to develop industry. For example, Brazil had an international debt of $159 billion in 1995, on which it must make payments each year. The logging companies seek to harvest the forest and make profit from the sales of pulp and valuable hardwoods such as mahogany. Genetic engineering of food and fiber products is inherently unpredictable and dangerous--for humans, for animals, the environment, and for the future of sustainable and organic agriculture. As Dr. Michael Antoniou, a British molecular scientist points out, gene-splicing has already resulted in the

"unexpected production of toxic substances... in genetically engineered bacteria, yeast, plants, and animals with the problem remaining undetected until a major health hazard has arisen." The hazards of

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GE foods and crops fall basically into three categories: human health hazards, environmental hazards, and socioeconomic hazards. A brief look at the already-proven and likely hazards of GE products provides a convincing argument for why we need a global moratorium on all GE foods and crops. In December 2007, the United Nations Climate Change Conference took place in Bali, Indonesia. . After 10 days of intense discussion, more than 180 countries agreed to the Bali Roadmap. The Bali Roadmap will guide participating countries in emissions reduction and intends to lead to a binding agreement at the 2009 United Nations summit in Denmark. The United States and China initially did not agree to mandatory reductions, wanting countries to set their own goals, but they eventually conceded. The roadmap includes specific measures to reduce deforestation -- for tropical rainforests in particular. Many developing countries' economies rely on their forests, and they argue they should be able to use their land as they please. In response, the roadmap will investigate policies to financially reward countries who reduce their emissions by a certain percentage (the percentage has not yet been determined). Even this proposal faces controversy, however. Because those countries with the highest baseline rate of deforestation will receive the most reward credits, critics fear that many countries will rush to cut down trees in order to raise their own baseline. Conservation International -- teaches local farmers how to maximize their existing land, rather than clear new areas. All of these examples are not any benefit to our land or world we live in. If we continue to use DNA to create our foods then we have to deal with pestisides to threaten our soil. Removing forest to make room for farmers is not ideal. As this world continues to grow in population we will have to find ways that benefit everyone when it comes to the foods we will eat and the products we use from farmed lands

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Ronco, Debra How Deforestation works Taken from USA Today and Forest.org 10/12/2013 Cummin, Ronnie Hazards of Gentetically Engineered Food 10/12/3013 Earth Observatory 10/14/2013 http://online.sfsu.edu/rone/GEessays/hazardsGEfood.html