ROME, Italy: Feeding a growing global population will become almost impossible if the world doesn’t take better care of its rapidly deteriorating soils, a humanitarian agency warned on Earth Day.
More than a third of arable land is already degraded because of soil erosion — the loss of the topsoil by wind, rain or use of machinery — as well as contamination of soil and city sprawl, according to Catholic Relief Services (CRS).
“If we don’t start to address the issue of soil erosion I don’t see how we can address the food security needs,” Lori Pearson, an agricultural adviser at CRS told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Here are some facts on soils degradation and farming:
• Roughly 95 percent of all food in the world is produced in soil.
• More than 35 percent of ice-free land has been cleared of vegetation and converted to agriculture leaving soils more exposed to erosion and losses in soil carbon and nutrients.
* Earth’s soils contain more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere and vegetation combined.
* When land is overexploited or degraded, trapped carbon is released back into the atmosphere, resulting in planet warming emissions.
* It takes nature between 100 and 1,000 years to produce 1 cm of soil, and if poorly maintained it can be lost in a single rainfall, or high wind.
* The world is currently losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it.
* Each year 25 to 40 billion tons of topsoil are carried away by erosion.
* Crop losses to erosion could reach 10 percent by 2050 — equivalent to removing roughly all the arable land in India from crop production — if no action is taken.
* With the global population set to reach more than 9 billion by 2050, food production must rise by about 60 percent to generate enough for everyone to eat.
* Planting more lentils, chickpeas and other pulses can improve the health of the world’s soils. Sources: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation.
Keep Earth’s soils healthy to feed world’s growing population — NGO
Keep Earth’s soils healthy to feed world’s growing population — NGO
UK child killer Ian Huntley dies after prison attack: police
- Huntley murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in eastern England in 2002
- He suffered serious injuries when he was assaulted at Frankland maximum security prison in the northeastern English city of Durham on Feb. 26
LONDON: One of Britain’s most notorious child killers, Ian Huntley, died on Saturday following an attack in prison where he was serving a life sentence, police said.
Huntley murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in eastern England in 2002, in a case that horrified the country.
Fifty-two-year-old Huntley suffered serious injuries when he was assaulted at Frankland maximum security prison in the northeastern English city of Durham on Feb. 26.
He “died in hospital this morning,” a spokesperson for the local police force said in a statement emailed to AFP.
A spokesperson for the government’s justice ministry said the double murder of Holly and Jessica “remains one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation’s history, and our thoughts are with their families.”
Huntley killed the two best friends after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets in the village of Soham, Cambridgeshire, on Aug. 4 2002.
Their disappearance sparked a massive search involving hundreds of police officers and appeals for help.
A photograph of the two girls wearing matching Manchester United football tops became instantly recognizable to many Britons.
Their bodies were found almost two weeks later, dumped in a ditch several miles away.
Huntley, then a 28-year-old school caretaker, aroused the suspicion of police after he gave media interviews claiming to be concerned for the girls’ welfare.
He denied murdering them but was convicted at trial in 2003.
His girlfriend at the time, Maxine Carr a teaching assistant at the girls’ school, gave Huntley a false alibi and was jailed for perverting the course of justice. She now lives under a new identity.
Revelations that Huntley had been the subject of prior rape and sexual assault complaints led to the establishment of criminal checks for anyone working with children.
He had been attacked before in prison, most seriously in 2005 and 2010.
“A police investigation into the circumstances of the incident is ongoing,” the spokesperson said, adding that prosecutors would consider bringing charges against his assailant.
