Japan Announces Futuristic Farm On Site Of Tsunami Damage
Maybe I'm missing something, but if the place is too contaminated by radiation for humans to live there, why would anyone want food grown there? Why would the government encourage people to eat crops grown in radioactive soil?
Japan is planning a futuristic farm where robots do the lifting in an experimental project on land swamped by the March tsunami, the government said Thursday.
Under an agriculture ministry plan, unmanned tractors will work fields where pesticides will have been replaced by LEDs keeping rice, wheat, soybeans, fruit and vegetables safe until robots can put them in boxes.
Carbon dioxide produced by machinery working on the up to 250-hectare (600 acre) site will be channeled back to crops to boost their growth and reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, the Nikkei newspaper said.
The agricultural ministry will begin on-site research later this year with a plan to spend around four billion yen ($52 million) over the next six years, a ministry official said.
Land in Miyagi prefecture, some 300 kilometres (200 miles) north of Tokyo, which was flooded by seawater on March 11, has been earmarked for the so-called "Dream Project".
The tsunami, sparked by a 9.0-magnitude quake, inundated the country's northeast, killing more than 19,000 people, according to the latest figures.
It also badly polluted the land, leaving it laden with salt and depositing oil on fields, with around 24,000 hectares of once-fertile farmland damaged by the tsunami, earthquake and fallout from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.
Meltdowns at reactors at the plant sent radiation into the air, sea and food chain, badly denting public trust in local produce.
The atomic disaster and the ravaging of farmland were the latest blows to a struggling and ageing farm industry that is also facing the threat of renewed competition from abroad as Tokyo eyes a Pacific-wide free trade pact.
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Ignorance is parent to religion.
Religion is parent to Hate.
Remember Matthew Shepard:
http://vimeo.com/fuksnickityClam/matthew
Just some factual points. First, Miyagi is the prefecture south of Fukushima Prefecture but has never had radiation levels to warrant evacuations. There may be radiation hot spots that have contaminated fields in some areas, but it would be wrong to confuse it with areas within the Fukushima evacuation zone. The posters statement about "radioactive soil" is a misunderstanding. Second, the pollution that is being referred to here is primarily chemical and environmental, not radiation: when the tsunamis hit, they brought in not only a lot of salt, but also many chemicals from destroyed factories and oil facilities, rendering a lot of farmland hard to cultivate. I am as suspicious as anyone whether this proposed project will actually work, especially given the amount of government misinformation, but let's not fall into uninformed assumptions on our own that all of Japan is radioactive. (Frankly, I must add the original article is poorly written.)
Well, um, thanks for that, but for my money I think I'll just avoid products from the area... m'kay?
Second, the pollution that is being referred to here is primarily chemical and environmental, not radiation: when the tsunamis hit, they brought in not only a lot of salt, but also many chemicals from destroyed factories and oil facilities, rendering a lot of farmland hard to cultivate. ...This doesn't make me feel any better.
far left loon >.<
!
Ignorance is parent to religion.
Religion is parent to Hate.
Remember Matthew Shepard:
http://vimeo.com/fuksnickityClam/matthew
Actually, me too. There's a big pitch in Japan to get people to buy products from not only the neighboring prefectures, but also from Fukushima. We feel sorry for the farmers whose livelihood was ruined by government incompetence and TEPCO mismanagement, but until the government institutes a truly reliable and open means of testing produce and fairly discusses potential health risks (note the debacle over straw given to beef cattle and the tendency to raise allowable radiation limits without scientific basis), my wife and I, when we are in Japan, do not buy produce from that area. But just do keep in mind that there are differences. Yamagata, for instance, which is also next to Fukushima, got barely any radiation because of big mountains separating the two.
Experts have said all along that a much broader area should have been evacuated, that the Japanese government dealt with the problem by arbitrarily raising the acceptable level of radiation exposure.
http://www.cmaj.ca/site/earlyreleases/21dec11...
A former award-winning journalist and lifelong class warrior, keeping a jaundiced eye on the Washington elite.
in the form of references to published news pieces or corroborated reports, technically it is just your own personal opinion, not facts.
I am not claiming the author's opinion is correct. She could very well be equivocated, and what you said makes sense. But lots of posters in this site keep referring to their "own personal opinion/perception" as "facts," without even the slightest attempt at substantiating their claims.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
You have to admit glowing vegetables on your plate would rock.
Aside: I think I'm glad I'll be dead by the time robots and drones are ruling the planet and any dissent brands one a terrorist. Call me square. Call me old-fashioned. But there it is.
PS The Japanese amaze me with their inventiveness.
far left loon >.<
Giant Mutant Glowing Tomatoes.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
may as well pick up a few more. what does 50,000 half lifes work out to anyway?
i've got an idea, feed to food to them mutants in those secret govt. labs? that or long term food storage, you won't even have to irradiate the goods, all done.
but seriously, the species had better come up with some sort of a plan to contain the disasters we create, some way to keep the trash in the landfill, limit the damage, needless to say private industry ain't gonna do it.
What could possibly go wrong. We're using less workers to do the same work, a third arm would be great.
is intended to be a factual statement
http://www.theonion.com/video/2011-top-story-... http://www.sidereel.com/Gilligans_Island/seas... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfAuKF6jTqE&fe...
You can get your food already cooked
"No one ever said these people were logically consistent."
- watchdog -
Yes, you ARE missing something.
Can C&L please get a science editor/blogger.
Excellent idea.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
In the past, natural disasters like these could end a civilization. The Japanese response: let's speed up the process.
at http://www.fairewinds.com/
Food that cooks itself
Scientist Marco Kaltofen Presents Data Confirming Hot Particles
Seems to me as though otherwise-worthless land is ideal for testing technology like this. It may not work. You may end up with crops overrun by beetles or something, in which case it would a wasted season if you worked with land that could have been put to more conventional use.
Of course nobody wants to eat the veggies they grow here,* but using ruined land for something that might not produce any results seems like a good plan to me actually.
*note that I am not discounting the possibility of the Japanese government trying to make people eat it anyway, as they often do things that seem insane to me.
Yes they will, its happened in the past. Japanese schoolchildren get dolphin meat for lunch, which is high in bio-accumulated toxins like mercury.
There's kind of a method to that madness, though. There's not a lot of demand for dolphin and whale meat in Japan, and feeding it to kids both props up the industry now, and also has the potential to create demand in the future (if the kids enjoy it, which from what I've read they really don't much). That is an instance of the government supporting an industry that frankly needs to die already. The fact that the meat is dangerous is incidental.
I don't see the same dynamic in effect here, as there is currently no radioactive-veggie industry that needs propping. So it could go either way ... the rational response would be to use it as a test ground and dispose of all the produce on-site so as not to spread the risk, but the cynic in me says that it's more likely they would quietly distribute it to the poor in the guise of charity.
They can always give it to the homeless and the poorest on the totem pole.
far left loon >.<
A world where you could beat a man insensible with a strawberry
me-oww!
The land where they grow square watermelons.
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/images/square-wate...
far left loon >.<
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