Agriculture Part 1

Hi, welcome back.

Last time I, hopefully, gave you an impression of where this blog would take us as well as a few facts and figures to get us rolling. Today I’d like to introduce my first theme in environmental impacts of an increasing human population…..AGRICULTURE.

Hong Kong has a total area of approximately 1100km² consisting of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories (including Lantau Island and over 260 smaller islands). The Hong Kong Government estimate that only a quarter of the total area represents ‘developed’ land and it is within this 275km² that the majority of Hong Kong’s 7.2 million strong population live and work.

A false-colour satellite image of Hong Kong depicting developed (pink) and natural (green) landscapes (Courtesy of Wikipedia, annotated by the author).

Clearly the areas of ‘developed land’ are predominantly highly urbanised or industrialised in order to accommodate the local population. Unfortunately outside of this area Hong Kong’s geography mainly comprises mountainous topography that prevents the development of large scale agricultural activity. It is estimated that at the beginning of 2014 there was only 7km² of active farmland in the whole region! (Hong Kong Government, 2014).

So how do they pick up the slack? They look to the north...CHINA! According to the HK Food and Health Bureau 90% of their fresh food is sourced directly from China.

Currently, and historically, China possesses the world’s largest population with 1.3 Billion people in 2013 (you guessed it: World Bank). However, as of 1998 the country only had 0.1 Hectares of arable land per person - that's less than half the world average at the time (Zhu and Chen, 2002). Given their population and low percentage of arable land how do they produce enough to subsist? Let alone have an excess with which to help out other countries?

Well, a major aspect of the country’s high productivity from a limited area is due to the introduction of Nitrogen based chemical fertilisers (CF-N) (Wikipedia). After the Second World War the application of these fertilisers allowed China’s overall food production to increase by over 450% in 50 years (1950-2000) (Chinese Agriculture Yearbook 1980-1999 cited in Zhu and Chen, 2002). This massive growth was achieved in spite of an overall decrease in the total arable area of the country, predominantly due to increasing levels of construction and industrialisation (People's Republic of China Government website).

There we have it: a clear example of an increasing population placing a severe impact on an environment. Complete with an anthropogenic solution of chemically altering the environment in order to inflate its naturally sustainable production level.

However, there are a couple of sides to this story that we have not yet covered: Firstly is the fact that achieving this immense output is requiring higher and higher applications of CF-N's each year. For a little context (by now I hope you realise that this means ‘here are some numbers’) these yearly increases mean that in 1998 China used 30% of the total Nitrogen fertilisers used in the world (Zhu and Chen, 2002).

Ok, that seems like a good place for a cliff-hanger. I’ll get another post up over the next few days where we can further this analysis and have a look at the impact that this massively increased quantity of Nitrogen is having on the natural environment and what steps could/can be taken to mitigate its effects.  Much like Stallone’s chef d'œuvre it’s sure to be a post filled with thrills.

Let's get started!

Hi, thanks for visiting!

First let's get some admin out of the way: This blog forms the assessment of the Global Environmental Change MSc module GEOG3057. My general aim over the next few months is to use this site as a vehicle to investigate the environmental impact caused by an increasing human population.

OK, time for a few facts and figures (this may get a little dry but once we’re all on the same page we can look at the ‘fun’ stuff):

Right now there are an estimated 7.2 billion people in the world, (World Bank website), a number that has increased by over 30% in the last 20 years (IAP Statement on Population Growth, 1994). Recently new projection (Gerland et al, 2014) have been published suggesting that rather than, as previously expected, levelling off in the near future the world’s population is actually expected to maintain its upward trend and has the potential to reach a colossal 12.3 billion people by the end of 2100.

Distribution of world population (2014). Courtesy of Wikipedia.

So now we know there are a lot of people around and even more are coming. Acquiring the resources to sustain the this population has long been recognised as a serious environmental issue (Reed College) and over the next few months you and I will investigate some of the effects of our population on the environment as well as established and proposed methods to combat these impacts.

All well and good but the world’s a big place, so in order to maintain a common thread throughout the blog my investigations will focus predominantly on Hong Kong with further examples drawn from China (although I may occasionally stray out of this locale if exterior examples crop up during my research).

Why focus on Hong Kong? Well, after visiting the ‘Special Administrative Region’ several years ago I was immediately struck by the sheer scale of the city: the huge skyscrapers across Central framed every view, hordes of people swarmed the streets of Kowloon at all hours and extensive shopping malls jam packed with every consumable imaginable line the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui (‘Tsimsy’ as its locally known).

The whole city seemed to be straining against its physical, resource and environmental limits. Clearly the demands and output of this city have substantial implications on the environment, indeed even a quick moment of research into Hong Kong’s recent events indicate that extensive land reclamation projects (SCMP, 2013) are currently being undertaken (an impact that we shall be looking into further in the near future).

The juxtaposition of this 7.2 million strong population and the numerous national parks across Hong Kong provides an ideal ‘front line’ between human population and the natural environment for our investigations. Extending our sphere of investigation to include China allows me to include a wider range of environmental and population scenarios that perhaps are so demonstrative when focusing on HK alone.

The skyscrapers of Central Hong Kong clustered the foot of Victoria Peak

(courtesy of mrwallpaper.com)

So that's the plan! I hope that you will join me for future posts, next time we can get right down to business.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me in the comments. If you like/hate/disagree with what you read or if you have any suggestions of relevant papers and articles that you find interesting then let me know. The whole point of this blog is to learn something new, if we can do that together then fantastic!

Thanks for reading this first instalment, here is me on the HK waterfront with a statue of Bruce Lee, because.....Bruce Lee!