The threat of soil pollution to food safety and sustainable agriculture
By Jet Hermida on Jul 25, 2008 in Farm Technology, Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture
FarmFriday again and we share this article from FFTC about the looming soil pollution problems in the Asian REgion associated with “contamination of heavy metals in soils due to rapid industrialization, urbanization and intensive agriculture.”
TSUKUBA, JAPAN – The Asian economy has been growing fast in recent decades, and environmental stresses are building up rapidly along the way. Most alarming is the increasing contamination of heavy metals in soils due to rapid industrialization, urbanization and intensive agriculture in the region. Soil, which is the landscape for the ecosystem and the basic resource for food production, is now threatened by ‘soil pollution,’ which has no obvious warning signs, and so has been growing unnoticed in many fields in Asian countries.
Along with industrial expansion, arable lands have been gradually degraded or contaminated with heavy metals and organic pollutants in most Asian countries. In the past two decades, this trend became more evident, significantly aggravating the quality of soils and crops as the concentration of pollutants continue to increase. Consequently, this brings about great risks to human health and the deterioratation of environmental quality.
continue reading about the threat of soil pollution to food safety and sustainable agriculture….
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