Will There Be Enough Food in 2050?

An alarming study shows that we may not be able to grow enough food for the population in 2050. The article, recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, looks at the trajectory of the farming output around the world and concludes that if we continue in the same path, there will not be enough food grown to feed the world's population in 2050.
Find out which 19 crops are in danger of disappearing due to environmental issues.
In the article, "Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050," its authors acknowledge that "crop demand may increase by 100–110 percent between 2005 and 2050," meaning the world would need to produce roughly double the crops it produces today to keep up with the increasing population, the increasing meat and dairy consumption and the increasing biofuel consumption.
According to the report, the way to sustainably grow more crops would be to increase crop yield rather than to increase farm land. While crop yields do continue to grow in certain locales, "yields are no longer improving on 24–39 percent of our most important cropland areas." In fact, while crop yield in the Midwestern United States have been increasing by two percent a year, crop yields in in parts of India and Eastern Europe have been static, according to an article from the Washington Post.
In comparing our capacity to increase crop yields, based on historical performance, and our future needs, the outlook looks dire. The study found that, the average rate of crop yield increase around the world is 1.2 percent per year (when looking at the world's top crops: maize, rice, wheat and soybeans). Meanwhile, the world would need to increase its rate of crop yield increase per year by 2.4 percent to fulfill our doubled needs in 2050.
These findings are highlighted in the graph above. The dotted lines denote where we will need crop yield to be in the years leading up to 2050, in order to fulfill demand, and the solid lines show where we will actually be in terms of yield if we continue on our current path.
As frightening as this graph is, what is even scarier is the fact that there are still many other factors that may pull the actual crop yields down in the year's leading up to 2050. Climate change could cause increased temperatures and droughts, stifling the ability to increase crop yields and other environmental issues such as declining bee populations could limit our ability to reach even the yield levels of the solid lines in the graph.

Women OD'ing on Opiate Painkillers at Skyrocketing Rates, CDC Says

 

TUESDAY, July 2, 2013 — Five-times as many women are dying from prescription painkillers than they were a decade ago. The number of women overdosing on opiate and other prescription painkillers has increased five-fold since 1999, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Researchers found that the number of women overdosing on prescription painkillers increased by more than 400 percent between 1999 and 2010, climbing from 1,287 to 6,631 --  48,000 in total. Four times as many women died from painkiller overdoses as from cocaine and heroin combined during that period. For the year 2010 alone, the tragic consequence was that approximately 18 women died of drug overdoses every day in the United States.
Prescription painkillers are powerful but dangerous drugs, and more people than ever are becoming addicted, researchers said, and reversing the trend needs to be a top priority.
“Stopping this epidemic in women – and men – is everyone’s business. Doctors need to be cautious about prescribing and patients about using these drugs," said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, in a statement. Since 1999, the number of men overdosing on prescription painkillers increased by 265 percent.
Prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin were cited by the CDC, and one of the main reasons is because doctors over-prescribe these medications, said Lauren Streicher, MD, Everyday Health columnist and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“There’s a complacency about prescribing these drugs,” Dr. Streicher said. “It used to be that prescribing a narcotic was a big deal, but now it’s easy to get these drugs.”
Dr. Frieden agreed, saying that the increase in deaths is directly proportional to the increased number of prescriptions. While narcotics used to be reserved for chronic, debilitating pain, they are now frequently prescribed for all kinds of general pain, even when not warranted, he said.
"These are dangerous medications, and they should be reserved for instances such as severe cancer pain," Frieden said in a CDC conference call. "But in many other situations, the risks far outweigh the benefits. Prescribing opiates may be condemning a patient to life-long addiction."
Many women who are addicted to prescription painkillers will “doctor-shop,” Streicher said --  going to multiple doctors to get several prescriptions for their drugs.
“There’s this notion that with electronic medical records, doctors are all connected, but that’s not the case,” said Streicher. “I have no way of knowing if a patient of mine has been stockpiling drugs from other doctors. Sometimes it’s a pharmacist who catches it, but if she goes to different pharmacies, we have no way of knowing.”
And simply creating a network of medical records wouldn’t be enough, she added. “I think unifying EMR [electronic medical records] would help, but isn’t the perfect solution,” she said. “Many people are getting drugs from friends, family and on the street.”
Women also tend to self-medicate, Streicher said, which makes curbing the deadly trend even more difficult.
“We have more women who are self-treating, either because of lack of access to a doctor or because they consult Google instead of their doctor,” she said. “They take their husband’s Vicodin and of course it’s going to have a different effect in them than in their husband. An appropriate dose for a man is not the appropriate dose for a woman.”
Streicher stressed the importance of helping potentially suicidal women get the help they need, especially since 34 percent of all suicide attempts and deaths among women in 2010 were by drug overdose, compared to 8 percent of suicides among men.
“Women are far more likely to commit suicide with prescription drugs,” Streicher said. “The onus is on society to screen for depression and suicidal tendencies and make sure they don’t have the means to do so.”
She also called for more initiatives to educate the public about the dangers of prescription drugs, and said the CDC’s report is a good start.
“These statistics are going to open some eyes and help people realize the danger of these drugs,” she said. “Women need to know it’s not a good idea to abuse prescription drugs, self-medicate or mix drugs with alcohol."

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi, Army Chiefs Prepare For Showdown Hours Ahead Of Ultimatum

CAIRO, July 3 (Reuters) - Egypt's army commander and Islamist President Mohamed Morsi each pledged to die for his cause as a deadline neared on Wednesday that will trigger a military takeover backed by protesters.

Military chiefs, vowing to restore order in a country racked by demonstrations over Morsi's Islamist policies, issued a call to battle in a statement headlined "The Final Hours". They said they were willing to shed blood against "terrorists and fools" after Morsi refused to give up his elected office.



The armed forces general command was holding a crisis meeting, a military source said, less than five hours before an ultimatum was due to expire for Morsi to either agree to share power or make way for an army-imposed solution.

In an emotional, rambling midnight television address, the president said he was democratically elected and would stay in office to uphold the constitutional order, declaring: "The price of preserving legitimacy is my life."

Liberal opponents said it showed he had "lost his mind".

The official spokesman of his Muslim Brotherhood movement said his supporters were willing to become martyrs to defend Morsi.

"There is only one thing we can do: we will stand in between the tanks and the president," Gehad El-Haddad told Reuters at the movement's protest encampment in a Cairo suburb that houses many military installations and is near the presidential palace.

"We will not allow the will of the Egyptian people to be bullied again by the military machine."

The state-run Al-Ahram newspaper said Morsi was expected to either step down or be removed from office and that the army would set up a three-member presidential council to be chaired by the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court.

A military source said he expected the army to first call political, social and economic figures and youth activists for talks on its draft roadmap for the country's future.


REVOLUTION SAVED?

A mass of revellers on Cairo's Tahrir Square feted the army overnight for, in their eyes, saving the revolutionary democracy won there two years ago when an uprising toppled autocratic President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

But Morsi's backers denounced the army's intervention as a "coup". At least 16 people, mostly supporters of the president, were killed and about 200 wounded when gunmen opened fire on pro-Morsi demonstrators at Cairo University campus.

The Muslim Brotherhood accused uniformed police of the shooting. The Interior Ministry said it was investigating.

Central Cairo was quiet by day. Many stores were shuttered and traffic unusually light. The stock market index fell 1.7 percent on fears of bloodshed. The Egyptian pound weakened against the dollar at a currency auction, and banks said they would close early, before the army deadline.

Military sources earlier told Reuters the army had drafted a plan to sideline Morsi, suspend the constitution and dissolve the Islamist-dominated upper house of parliament after the 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) deadline passes.

The opposition Dustour (constitution) party led former U.N. nuclear agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei appealed for military intervention to save Egyptian lives, saying Morsi's speech showed he had "lost his mind" and incited bloodshed.

The opposition National Salvation Front, an umbrella group of liberal, secular and leftist parties, and the "Tamarud - Rebel!" youth movement leading the street protests have both nominated ElBaradei to negotiate with army leaders on a post-Morsi transition.

Coordinated with political leaders, an interim council would rule pending changes to the Islamist-tinged constitution and new presidential elections, the military sources said.

They would not say what was planned for the uncooperative president, whose office refused to disclose his whereabouts.


"PEOPLE'S COUP"

In his 45-minute address to the nation, Morsi acknowledged having made mistakes and said he was still willing to form a national unity government ahead of parliamentary elections and let a new parliament amend the constitution.

But he offered no new initiative and rejected calls to step aside, saying it was his sacred duty to uphold legitimacy - a word he repeated dozens of times.

The president accused remnants of Mubarak's former regime and corrupt big money families of seeking to restore their privileges and lead the country into a dark tunnel.

Liberal opposition leaders, who have vowed not to negotiate with Morsi since the ultimatum was issued, immediately denounced his refusal to go as a declaration of "civil war".

"We ask the army to protect the souls of Egyptians after Morsi lost his mind and incited bloodshed of Egyptians," the Dustour Party said in a statement.

The youth movement that organised the mass protests urged the Republican Guard to arrest Morsi immediately and present him for trial.

"We ask the army to intervene to prevent the bloodshed of the Egyptian people," Tamarud's founder Mahmoud Badr told a news conference. "This is a people's coup against a dictator and tyrant president and the army of the Egyptian people has to respond to the people's demands and act upon them." (Reporting by Asma Alsharif, Alexander Dziadosz, Shaimaa Fayed, Maggie Fick, Alastair Macdonald, Shadia Nasralla, Tom Perry, Yasmine Saleh, Paul Taylor, Ahmed Tolba and Patrick Werr in Cairo, Abdelrahman Youssef in Alexandria, Yursi Mohamed in Ismailia and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by)
By Tom Perry and Maggie Fick