They Paved Pears and Rice and Put Up a
Parking Lot, Lester R. Brown, Grist
As the automobile makes inroads into densely populated developing
countries like China and India, cropland may be sacrificed for
highways. Extrapolating from data on the U.S., Europe, and Japan,
Lester R. Brown, founder of the World Watch Institute, estimates
that China could lose almost half of the land that it uses to farm
rice in order to create paved roads for cars. He also asserts that
‘The competition between cars and crops for land is becoming a
competition between the rich and the poor, between those who can
afford automobiles and those who struggle to buy enough
food.’
–Sara V. Buckwitz
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