Author Question: According to current estimates, rice agriculture will expand by up to 70 over the next 25 years to ... (Read 15 times)

rayancarla1 · **on:** Jul 28, 2018

According to current estimates, rice agriculture will expand by up to 70 over the next 25 years to support the growing human population. This will not be any sort of massive problem for Earth's ecosystem to bear.

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

A screening curve exhibiting utility prices is only useful as long as the fuel price assumptions going into the curve are reflective of actual cost.

What will be an ideal response?

johnpizzaz · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 28, 2018

Answer to Question 1

This can cause problems. Most productive agricultural land is already being used.
Where will the additional land come from? It will be less desirable, because it is not so
fertile, it does not have an assured rainfall, etc. If it does not have enough rainfall, it may
have to be irrigated. Rice cultivation uses huge amounts of water (think of pictures of rice
paddies you have seen).
Exploitation might degrade the land as happened in the former USSR. The Aral Sea has
essentially dried up as a result of growing cotton on land irrigated by the Amu Darya and
Syr Daria Rivers. Many people living in the area have been adversely affected as the soil of
the former sea bottom has blown contaminants into local air. The fishery there has been
devastated.

Answer to Question 2

That is trueutilities can be blindsided by unpredictable changes in cost. At the
beginning of the 1970s, oil-fired power plants looked very good. After the 1970s and 1980s
energy crises, this turned out to be really wrong.