Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the buy-local movement, said Yonkers, is our nation's deep reliance on an industrial agricultural system, and a population accustomed to having all types of food available at all times, no matter what the season.
About three-quarters of the population depends on the agricultural sector for its livelihood and the sector provides for about one-fifth of GDP.
Syria will reach the limit of food self-sufficiency in 10-35 years, depending on the effectiveness of its measures to improve irrigation efficiency and agricultural yields, and to control population growth.
Rapid population growth has put enormous pressure on agricultural systems that have been pushed towards unsustainable farming practices in order to cope with demand.
The biggest challenges will lie in Africa - where agricultural productivity has been falling and 30% of the population is permanently under-nourished.
Agricultural fertilisers washed off the land by rain can cause algal population booms, making more food available to the larvae.
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Even relatively water-rich countries of the region, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Bhutan and Papua New Guinea, now face water supply and quality constraints in their major cities because of population growth, growing water consumption, environmental degredation, damaging agricultural activities, poor management of water catchment areas, industrialization, and groundwater overuse.
Yet the county encompasses much more: agricultural pockets in the northwest, retiree havens along the coast and a growing Hispanic population in the southwest.
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Within the initiative of Joint Programme targeted at creation of new income generation opportunities and promotion of improved agricultural practices, 24 rural farmers and dehkhans (small farmers) in target areas were selected to form a network of agriculture extension agents (rural consultants) responsible for provision of consultancy services to rural population and solutions to the problems they might face in application of new agricultural practices.
"The report says only half the people that took part - and remember, 99.9% of the population did not - had some concerns, " said Paul Rylott, of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC), which represents biotech firms like Monsanto and Bayer CropScience.
Certainly the warm period increased the productivity of crops which led to an increase in population, the subsequent cooling (and more importantly, change in rainfall patterns) reduced agricultural productivity and led to hunger and starvation.
To meet projected food demand by 2050, when the world's population will have grown from 7 billion now to about 9 billion, it says global agricultural production will need to grow 60% above the level of 2007.
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