Enduring Issues Essay Practice Full Essay

The Industrial Revolution began in England around 1750 and continued into the 19th century, bringing about signifi cant changes in the British way of life. This excerpt is from an essay that explored themes from the temporary exhibition, at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in 2008–2009 entitled “The Industrial Revolution and the changing face of Britain”.

The industrial and economic developments of the Industrial Revolution brought signifi cant social changes. Industrialization resulted in an increase in population and the phenomenon of urbanization, as a growing number of people moved to urban centres in search of employment. Some individuals became very wealthy, but some lived in horrible conditions. A class of prosperous industrialists, ship owners and merchants dominated, accumulating great wealth, but at the same time the working classes had to live with minimum comforts in overcrowded environments. Children were sent to work in factories, where they were exploited and ill-treated; women experienced substantial changes in their lifestyle as they took jobs in domestic service and the textile industries, leaving the agricultural workforce and spending less time in the family home. This period also saw the creation of a middle class that enjoyed the benefits of the new prosperity. People started spending their free time entertaining themselves in theatres, concert halls and sports facilities or enjoying the countryside in long promenades [walks]. . . .

On September 8, 2000, thirty years after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in food production and hunger relief, Laureate Norman Borlaug gave an anniversary lecture at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. This is an excerpt from his lecture.

Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, September 8, 2000 . . .I am now in my 56th year of continuous involvement in agricultural research and production in the low-income, food-deficit developing countries. I have worked with many colleagues, political leaders, and farmers to transform food production systems. Despite the successes of the Green Revolution, the battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won. Mushrooming [fast-growing] populations, changing demographics* and inadequate poverty intervention programs have eaten up many of the gains of the Green Revolution. This is not to say that the Green Revolution is over. Increases in crop management productivity can be made all along the line – in tillage [land under cultivation], water use, fertilization, weed and pest control, and harvesting. However, for the genetic improvement of food crops to continue at a pace sufficient to meet the needs of the 8.3 billion people projected in 2025, both conventional breeding and biotechnology methodologies will be needed. . . . Had the world’s food supply been distributed evenly, it would have provided an adequate diet in 1998 (2,350 calories, principally from grain) for 6.8 billion people – about 900 million more than the actual population. However, had people in Third World countries attempted to obtain 70 percent of their calories from animal products – as in the USA, Canada, or EU [European Union] countries – only about half of the world population would be fed. These statistics point out two key problems. The first is the complex task of producing sufficient quantities of the desired foods to satisfy needs, and to accomplish this Herculean [difficult] feat in environmentally and economically sustainable ways. The second task, equally or even more daunting, is to distribute food equitably. Poverty is the main impediment [obstacle] to equitable food distribution, which, in turn, is made more severe by rapid population growth . . . .

This passage discusses changing population patterns in Brazil and in the Amazon region.

. . .Some countries such as Brazil are seeing signifi cant internal migration. Most countries, including Brazil, have seen signifi cant migration from rural areas into cities. But in Brazil, millions of people are also moving into the Amazon region, a vast resourcerich rain forest drained by the largest river on Earth, the Amazon. These people and the companies they work for are in quest of valuable resources such as timber, gold, oil, and land that can be ranched or farmed. To exploit these resources means cutting down rain forest land and displacing rain forest peoples. . . . The related demographic issue is that much of this land is not actually empty of human beings. Rather, indigenous peoples from many tribes live there. These Native Americans are mainly hunter-gatherers who rely on hunting game and gathering berries and other edible foods across large stretches of land. They migrate through these areas, rather than staying in fi xed locations as agricultural peoples do. One of the indigenous rain forest groups is the Yanomami. According to current estimates, only about thirty thousand Yanomami remain in an area roughly three times the size of Switzerland around Brazil’s border with Venezuela. Their way of life is in serious jeopardy as they are being displaced by population pressures from outside their culture and traditional homelands. For example, about forty thousand independent gold miners have overwhelmed Yanomami territory in recent decades. The Brazilian government has worked with the Yanomami to preserve some land for indigenous peoples, much like the reservation system in the United States. . . .