Asia

Asia, home to more than half of the human race, spans a geographic area that reaches from Pakistan and India in the west, across China and Mongolia to the north, extending to Japan in the east, and throughout Indonesia in the south. An area of over 8 million square miles supports three and a half billion people (Weightman 1); a true myriad of cultures, traditions and languages, Asia is nearly impossible to conceptualize as a single entity. Interspersed across this vast sweep of land and sea are many sovereign nations, a slew of religions, and nearly every geographical landscape imaginable.

Naturally, in the 21st century, how this massive continent develops will critically impact the rest of the world. Largely under-developed, Asian nations are poised to experience many transitions perhaps even revolutions in the realm of agriculture and biotechnology. In some respects an untapped resource, there is no limit to what the Asian continent can and should produce in the coming decades.

And yet, as it stands Asia, like the world at large, contends with poverty and starvation in spite of a surfeit of food production unrivaled throughout the course of human history. However Asia, unlike other regions of the world, bears a disproportionate percentage of the many burdens associated with poverty. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, in 2004 approximately 1.2 billion people in the world are expected to be living under a one-dollar-a-day consumption

Related Essays

Regional Integration in Asia .... In Asia, there are a number of complexities that have prevented such adoption of neo-liberal economic reforms and democratic institutions. .... (1731 7 )

Western Popular Music Influence in Asia .... impact of the Beatles and other groups from the 1960s has altered the popular music scene in different regions of the world, including the nations of Asia. .... (1623 6 )

Economic Integration: The US and East Asia .... changing. The United States has in recent years, become far more participative in economic integration with the countries of East Asia. .... (2176 9 )

Dance in Asia In his study of dance in Asia during the early part of the century, Shawn made the statement that Asians, like him, seemed to believe in gods who dance (Shawn 4 .... (1147 5 )

Economic Development in Asia .... Modernization theorists point to Asia as basic confirmation of the argument that capitalist economies prevail, technological innovation and education are .... (843 3 )

able as populations continue to rise. As Thomas R. DeGregori writes in Agriculture and Modern Technology, the verdict on the Green Revolution is essentially in: "No matter how one compares losses, the agricultural technology of the green revolution has made more food available to far more people than at any time in human history" (142). As a corollary to this, recent inroads in biotechnology promise even better solutions; where in the past the Green Revolution was perhaps too dependent upon pesticides, in the future this problem will be alleviated by the introduction of new non-chemical strategies (DeGregori 143). Additionally, biotechnology promises to introduce crop varieties that are bred or genetically modified to be more disease-resistant. In Asia specifically, the Green Revolution has, according to DeGregori, greatly benefited humankind. Referring back to the 1990s, DeGregori illustrates that throughout Asia poverty rates have declined dramatically and steadily thanks to the Green Revolution. In India, "In over two decades since the introduction of the green revolution technologies, the percentage of the population�living in absolute poverty has fallen to 35%" (DeGregori 159). This figure is down from 55%. Similarly

Category: Foreign - A