In Hunan - China's Breadbasket - Rice Output Eroding Under Growing Toxic Metals Contamination

[hatrack]

EDIT

Cao still does not understand exactly how the rice came to be contaminated with cadmium, but he does know that the environment of his once-fertile village is polluted. Hunan, known as China’s granary, is a major rice-growing province, producing some 30 million tons a year, or around15 percent of the total national crop. You County is one of the province’s top four rice-growing counties, with more than 16,000 acres of paddy fields under cultivation in 2012, and a harvest of 484,400 tons. With a growing population and a long established concern for national food security, the government encourages rice farmers in Hunan and other provinces to produce as much as they can.

But Hunan is also known for the non-ferrous metal mines that produce almost 50 million tons of waste a year. Wastewater from mining is frequently used to irrigate farmland, and mine tailings, which contain cadmium among other pollutants, tend to be poorly managed. It was cadmium from Hunan’s mine waste that had leaked into the soil and contaminated the rice.

EDIT

In November 2010, the China Geological Survey investigated soil conditions in the Yellow River Basin, the Northeast Plains and the Yangtze River Basin, collecting more than two million samples and analyzing 600,000 composite samples. They found that the municipality of Zhuzhou, which includes You County, had the highest level of cadmium pollution in China: more than 62 square miles of the land tested had levels five times the permitted limit.

Since the start of the 10th Five Year Plan in 2001, Hunan has been the country’s largest source of mercury, cadmium, chromium and lead pollution, and, next to Gansu Province, the second largest source of arsenic pollution. According to official figures, nearly 11,000 square miles of land in Hunan, 13 percent of the total area of the province, has been polluted by mining waste and heavy metals.

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http://e360.yale.edu/feature/in_hunan_province_the_toxic_trail_leads_from_the_factories_to_the_fields/2784/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. China has been buying up farmland on other continents from what I hear.

Or buying food production companies. They've bought their way into pork producers in the US, milk in New Zealand, and various tracts of farmland on the African continent. I think the Chinese government has been seeing this coming for years.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. They are vulture capitalists, too.

We've taught them well.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. We seem quite effective at teaching all of the worst lessons.

I think we need to focus more on teaching other nations to avoid our mistakes, rather than repeating them.

[littlemissmartypants]

2. Yummy. nt