Month: September 2013
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China signs deal to farm 5% of Ukraine
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Earlier this year, China signed a deal that will allow China to lease and farm 3 million hectares of agricultural land in Ukraine, or five percent of Ukraine. With fertile plains and a climate similar to the wheat-growing regions of Manitoba, Ukraine is one of the world’s top grain-producing countries. According to Mandy Zuo of…
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Not your typical soil probe
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What happens when you ask a local farmer if you can take a soil sample from his field? He says he has something better than a soil probe: he has an excavator and he’ll dig you a 6-foot trench. So students in GEG-105 Physical Geography: Earth System Science this week were treated to a view…
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“Overpopulation is not the problem”
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This recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by geographer and environmental scientist Erle Ellis sums up perfectly last week’s lesson in GEG/ENV-250 Nature & Society. Here’s an excerpt: “Unable to explain how [human] populations grew for millenniums while increasing the productivity of the same land, I discovered the agricultural economist Ester Boserup, the…
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Welcome Geographers
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Welcome geographers and friends of geography to the 2013 academic year at Gustavus Adolphus College. The Department of Geography is proud to welcome back Anna Versluis as Department Co-Chair, Visiting Instructor Lencho Bati, Visiting Assistant Professor Ryan Bergstrom, Professors Emeriti Bob Douglas and Bob Moline, and Administrative Assistant Judy Helmeke. We are especially excited to…