Sustainable Eating in Southeast Asia

     In my last two blog posts, I talked about the importance of knowing where your food comes from, as often times advertisements in the media lies to us about the chemicals and genetic modifications they do to the food we consume in order to gain a bigger profit. Since I have been mainly focusing on this ongoing issue that is occurring in the United States, I figured it would be time to focus on the same issue of unsustainable agriculture habits in other countries where it is less advertised. Specifically, I decided to research organic farming in Southeast Asia and what the government is doing about it, if at all, to make people more conscious and gain knowledge of the consequences that can come from consuming too much processed food.General facts about food in Southeast Asia:

• Governments have been neglecting agriculture

• People cannot afford good and healthy food

• People who are suffering from food shortage are "largely hidden" in the media, and has a lower public profile, and only on occasion does this issue hit headlines

• In 2005-2006, on average some 16 per cent of the region’s population, 542 million people, were going hungry

There are so many factors that hinder the region from fixing this ongoing problem, and one of the biggest problems with sustainable agriculture in Southeast Asia as I have learned, is the problem of land degradation. Ironically enough, the land degradation largely comes from over-intensive cultivation of the land. Because there is such a demand in food because of the large number of people, a lot of farmers have been pushed into "ecologically fragile areas."

However, none of this can actually be helped if not enough people even know that it is a problem. Vivian talks about the problem of censorship in media, especially in countries such as China that uses the Golden Shield Firewall to control internal internet communication within the country. Granted, most of the media that is actually being censored are things such as Taiwan independence or human rights. Arguably though, the best way to get people actively involved and making a difference to change the way things are, through social media, to reach masses of the public audience. The thing that they would be advocating for, is fixing land degradation. The problem with that is that people would then realize that the country had a problem to begin with, and the government may see that as damage to the nation's reputation.

Recently, according to an article on The Guardian, more and more southeast Asian countries have followed in China's footsteps with the increase in censorship.

Here are some of the consequences:

• In Vietnam, the Communist party wants to be your "friend" on the state-run version of Facebook, provided you are willing to share all personal details.

• In Burma, political unrest can be silenced by cutting off the country from the internet.

• In Thailand, website moderators can face decades in jail for a posted comment they did not even write, if the government deems it injurious to the monarchy.

Interestingly enough though, there are actually things being done about it, just not a lot and not enough. According to this article called "Reducing food poverty by increasing agricultural sustainability in developing countries", their research found 63 sustainable projects being implemented in Asia, which is actually more than other places such as Latin America, who has implemented 45 projects. If the government could just loosen up their reigns on the media, then perhaps people could get involved in these projects and actually help make a difference instead of rely on the very few people who do!