THE APOLLO BOTANICAL STUDIES GOOD COLOR circa late 1960s NASA: Apollo, z-in to moon surface, cu moon's surface; astronaut takes samples of moon rocks; pov moon buggy on moon; earth rising above moon's surface; scientist in lunar lab, material gloves cases; lab tech puts the samples in refrigerator; lab techs work with plants; Houston receiving lab, circa 60; lab tech at microscope with lunar material; lunar soil sample seen under microscope; plant leaves exposed to lunar material; various experiments, algae in beakers; cu hand writes; red algae magnified; fern leaves growing in jars; seed germination; fern cultures, scientist in labs; waterfall, field of wheat, field of corn; NASA AT WORK: moon's surface, various 'The eagle has landed' astronauts on moon, one small step for mankind, footprints on moon, rocket blastoff; cu sunset radiant; solar panel, wind generator; space shuttle lands; cu moon, astronauts on moon; satellite silhouetted at sunset; room with old computers, central control; m/s half moon in sky; pov moon, eclipse of sun by earth; pov moon, earth; w/s space craft on moon; astronaut on moon; newspaper headlines re: 'walk on the moon'; spaceship flies above moon; moon in sky seen from earth

MS of cluster of apples in tree. ESTABLISHING HA PAN of orchards, countryside. Interior shot of laboratory, two technicians at work. Various shots of operations including collection of pollen in small bottles, test for germination. MS of man looking into microscope, cut to photomicrograph of germinating pollen. Shot of man removing apple seed from cold storage, laying racks of seed on flat surface to allow seed to germinate. MS, CUs of two men preparing apple blossoms for tests in field, pollen-bearing stamen are removed to prevent self-pollinization, blossoms and sometimes, whole tree are bagged to prevent wind and insect born pollen to spoil experiment. Shot of pistils being pollinized by hand. Seedlings being transplanted and allowed to come to fruit in order to examine quality of fruit. Interior shot of office where records of experiment are kept. HAS over nursery producing varieties produced experimentally. MS of man removing bud sticks from apple bush. LS and CU of people budding seedlings. Shots of seedlings receiving cultivation, being sold to fruit growers and being planted in commercial orchard. Sequence on planting operation, pruning. Winter shot of trees being pruned. Sequence on buds of different varieties being crafted into tree limb.

Worthing, West Sussex. <br/> <br/>In a laboratory we see various shots of scientists separating and germinating mushroom spores to obtain seeds for growers. A bottle of seeds labelled 'Darlington's Grain Spawn, Worthing'. <br/> <br/>C/Us of a bed of mushrooms growing. At a mushroom packing factory, women pick mushrooms from beds in the darkened sheds, pack them into boxes and weigh them. <br/> <br/>Good C/U of fried breakfast - mushrooms, bacon, sausages and tomatoes - cooking in a frying pan. Several shots of new ideas for serving mushrooms; some excellent footage here of party food / parties. Plates of 1960s party food (mostly teeming with mushrooms) being passed around; guests eating vol-au-vents and other nibbles; trying a mushroom dip. A man sets alight a plate of mushrooms in brandy. <br/> <br/>Cuts exist - see separate record.

Events related to China's First Thermonuclear Test. Mushroom cloud rises in the sky. Results of the thermonuclear test are studied. Test dogs in underground bunkers are found to be more protected then those on the surface during the test. Man shoes eggs laid by chicken after the test. Monkeys in sheltered headquarters are discovered completely protected from the effects of the blast. Exposed test buildings on the surface are completely destroyed but the semi underground buildings are in good condition. View of germinated seeds that germinated even after being exposed to the test. Crops in field continue to grow even after being exposed. People buy newspapers, cheer and celebrate on streets in China. English translation overlays Chinese narration. Location: China. Date: October 1966.

NAME: MEAST PALM 140605N TAPE: EF05/0524 IN_TIME: 10:33:55:01 DURATION: 00:02:24:03 SOURCES: APTN DATELINE: Various, 14 June 2005/FILE RESTRICTIONS: SHOTLIST: Masada - File 1. View of Masada archaeological site Jerusalem - 14 June 2005 2. Various of STILLS of person holding four 2000 year old date seeds 3. STILL of new plant 4. Dr. Sara Sallon of the Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre in the Hadassa hospital looking at pictures on computer 5. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Sara Sallon, Doctor for Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre: "And the radio fourteen dating of those two fragment in a whole seed, came back as a 1900 years - plus or minus a hundred. It actually came out as 65 of the common era, just about five years off the date of Masada." Southern Jordan Valley Recent - File 6. Sallon walking in date grove Jerusalem - 14 June 2005 7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Sara Sallon, Doctor for Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre: "And about a week later she said, 'there's a green little tip coming out of the crack', and we were kind of 'what, what?' So I just said keep doing what ever your doing." Southern Jordan Valley Recent - File 8. Sallon walking into greenhouse 8. New date plant in greenhouse Jerusalem - 14 June 2005 10. SOUNDBITE: (English) Dr. Sara Sallon, Doctor for Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre: "So you know, you talk about genetically modified food - this is kind of like historically modified food. This is a new date but it comes from ancient times maybe. So I kind of like that historically modified - its kind of interesting. So agriculturally, it may be very interesting as a food. Medicinally it may be very interesting as a medicine. Historically, of course it is fascinating to wake something up that has been asleep that long, and the whole area that this opens up, that if you can waken up a seed after 2000 years and get it to grow, there are a lot of possibilities in that area that we can also explore." Southern Jordan Valley Recent file 11. Close up of new plant 12. Wide of date grove 13. Close up of dates STORYLINE: Israeli researchers have germinated a sapling date palm from 2,000-year-old seeds, and claimed their research could lead to the discovery of new medicines that will benefit future generations. Sarah Sallon, of the Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre in Jerusalem, said she and her colleagues used seeds found in archaeological excavations at Masada, the desert mountain fortress where ancient Jewish rebels chose suicide over capture by Roman legions in A.D. 73. She said they were the oldest seeds ever brought back to life. "It actually came out as 65 of the common era, just about five years off the date of Masada," she said. Carbon dating of a fragment from the Masada seeds put their age at between 1,940 and 2,040 years. The palm plant, nicknamed Methusaleh after the biblical figure said to have lived for 969 years, is now about 12 inches (30 centimetres) tall. Sallon and her colleagues have sent one of its leaves for DNA analysis in the hope that it may reveal medicinal qualities that have disappeared from modern cultivated varieties. The date palms now grown in Israel were imported from California and are of a strain originating in Iraq, she said. The Judean date prized in antiquity but extinct until Methusaleh's awakening, might have had very different properties to the modern variant. "If you can waken up a seed after 2000 years and get it to grow, there are a lot of possibilities in that area that we can also explore," Sallon said. She and her colleagues hope it may hold promise for the future, like the anti-malarial treatment artemisinin, developed out of traditional Chinese plant treatment, and a cancer medicine made from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree. Until the DNA test results arrive in the coming weeks, the Israelis are closely observing the plant's physical development. If the plant survives, it will take some 30 years to bear fruit, provided it turns out to be female. Sallon, however, said that even a male is very valuable.

Actor Woody Harrelsonm has won a court fight in his attempts to legalize hemp production in Kentucky. A judge said today a state law putting hemp and marijuana in the same legal category is unconstitutional. Harrelson had planted hemp to challenge the law ... and was charged with a misdemeanor.

GROWTH OF SEEDS

COMP 8, NON-HUMAN SCIENCE:FILM-38F Germinating bean germinating seed. Seed in peat - root grows from center., bunch of seeds (looks like wheat) in earth germinating in TL time lapse, FILM51V T/L Single pea in soil, swelling & germinating. 1030 in dark earth BG germinating - root growing down to left and stem develops upwards, FILM-51H 00.02.40 ECU seed germination. Germination & root emergence of large spotted bean - root grows out of bean (ends up a bit moldy), ECU of red bean in earth as germination begins, and sprout is seen busting out of the side of the bean and roots. Single white pea on black BG (earth) germinates: shoot grows from the side. Row of seven peas at top of frame germinates, shoots growing downwards on black earth, FILM-51G T/L Large spotted bean germinating (lots of black frames). ECU bean/seed in moist earth - shoot bursts - bean raises up and root development seen, second take grows out of frame, Film-51A-O Non-motile chloroplasts in Elodea (pondweed) plant cells, photosynthesis, FILM-51BH TL Time lapse (t/l) of red cactus flowers opening. (pretty), bee buzzes by Yellow cactus flower blooms, closes and dies. Four white and yellow cactus buds open, flower and bloom. Flowers open and close in different order, lots of movement in this shot, spring blossom,00.06.12.00, FILM-54G Purple crocus flowers open in T/L, spring. Single white crocus flower, fully open (beautiful), FILM-54H Celandine yellow flower opens in T/L with black BG. Dramatic., FILM-51BS T/L Time lapse fruit bowl rotting: bananas, oranges, tangerines, apples, grapes mold grows and spreads over the bowl. Fruit flies appear. Fruit is eventually covered in a thick blanket of mold. Mold turns from white to dark gray. Decomposition, putrefaction, decay, disintegration., FILM-51AW T/L time lapse strawberries fill frame glossy red, juicy, summer fruits, strawberries decompose, grow mold and disintegrate, fruit flies appear, mold covers strawberries, 00.10.14.23, FILM-38Z Green apple on black BG rots T/L, fruit decays, 00.10.43.0FILM-51S T/L dead rat lying on grass, swells, fur breaks up as it decomposes Decomposition, putrefaction, decay, death (very "Zed and Two Noughts"),00.12.12.00FILM-6Z T/L dead cow rotsFILM-54 Seasonal changes (NOT T/L): WS pastoral, rural landscape in winter, brown field with green showing through, same WS landscape in spring, undulating green wheat in wind, same WS landscape in summer, golden wheat,00:15:47:00, FILM-51L Chloroplasts in plant cells. Plant cells multiplying. Includes focus pulls. Photosynthesis, oxygen production, FILM-51F Volvos (?). A spinning colony of bright green cells, on black BG, beautiful life forms! Spherical colonial algae about 0.5mm in width, patterns, turning, look like little green bubbles, FILM-51AD ECU mosquito sucks blood from human skin, malaria, insect, blood visible as mosquito body swells, FILM-51CJ ECU Cockroach antennae, cockroach creeps around corner, inspects crumb on floor. Bugs, insect, creepy crawlies, hygiene, horror, nightmare, skin crawl. CU cockroach crawling in cupboard., 00.18.52.0FILM-51B CU head lice crawling in hair. Pediculus capitis. Head lice in scalp and neck of human host, nits, FILM-51AC Adult mosquito on surface of water, various. Mosquito larvae hanging from surface of water. Mosquito life cycle, FILM-38BA Mosquito bite, CU mosquito on surface of skin engorged with red blood FILM-51AW Hanging chrysalises, T/L butterfly emerges from hanging chrysalis, wings expand. Rebirth, renewal., FILM-38-I CU Bed bug crawls on bed sheet. ECU bed bug on sheet, bed bug bites human skinFILM-51C-O Shield Bugs. Newly hatched nymphs crawling all over each other. Oechalia schellenbergii.,00.24.21.00FILM-51M T/L carnivorous plant closes around fly. Venus Flytrap (?) eats fly., FILM-38W Microscopic image of translucent dust mites moving in purple-colored carpet, moving little particles, feeding on skin flakes & dust particles in carpet, FILM-51CK Telescopic image of solar flares, sun flares that extend out of sun's corona, explosions on the side of the sun; VS shots surface of the sun, red orange, sun spots and sun storms. Cosmology, astronomy, fire, heat.,00.26.18.00FILM-54G T/L rotating stars in night sky over rock (CAM shots are better). Stars move past out of focus green leaves, sky turns black., 00.27.09.00FILM-38A Thermal imaging: hands pour water into kettle from sink; interesting effect., Thermal image washing hands in sink. Thermal image of kettle boiling on stovetop, you can see the heat slowly rising on kettle. Thermal hands pouring cup of tea., Thermal imaging CU full frame face, very creep, ghost like, aura., Thermal imaging car drives up and person gets out, 00.32.43.00FILM-51CG SCHLIEREN photography: enables density fields around an object to be seen. Romantic image of nose smelling rose, air currents, smells of rose actually seen! SMELL, 00.32.59.00FILM-51M ***COPYRIGHT GREEN DOOR FILMS*** IMPLOSION. Slo-Mo demolition; three white blocks of flats in urban landscape. Demolition occurs the one far right fist closely followed by the center one and finally the one on the far left. Clouds of dust., FILM-51CK ***COPYRIGHT GREEN DOOR FILMS*** Demolition; electricity pylons shot from behind cooling tower, SLO cooling tower demolition with pylon in BG, cloud and smoke rising up. Full WS cooling tower demolition falling down in smoke dust and debris. WS two cooling towers falling down SLO MO, Film-51J ECU slow motion match being struck and lighting/flaring, fire, flame

Time-Lapse of Germinating Lettuce

This silent, tinted film was created in 1928 by Eastman Classroom Films (a division of Kodak) to be a tool for education of students (:13). It shows the students silent images of the life of corn. A man picks at corn stalks (:16) checking for quality. A group of women sit in a circle husking corn following the harvest (:33). A close shot shows the tool in one of the woman’s hand used for husking the stalks (:52). A young couple dances among the group of locals (1:03) as a small band plays them on. Seed ears are selected (1:29). Good stalks are set into a basket (1:41). Corn ears are set onto sticks to dry (1:59). Horses drag a hoe across the land (2:22). The soil is tilled for new seeds (2:29). After setting to dry, the seeds are tested (2:55). Chosen seeds are rolled in a cloth to be germinated (3:13). The rolled piece is stuck into water (3:15) and set into a pan for several days. A farmworker unrolls the pack with seeds (3:43) to show they have begun to sprout. A fully grown ear of corn follows (3:51). Corn is removed from the ends of the stalk (4:03). A primitive wooden machine separates the corn from the cob (4:18). These are then sifted (4:27). The seeds are then spread evenly in the dirt (4:53). The film turns to show the process of cultivation as a modern tractor rides down the corn field (5:09). The tassels and leaves of the corn are seen reaching over the dirt continuing to grow (5:37). After harvest the corn field is planted with more corn seeds (5:57) as a man moves down the rows checking leaves. The process of producing silage is looked at (6:12). Corn is pulled from the rows as a tractor moves down the line (6:25). The corn is then delivered to the silo (6:38). A man inspects the ripeness of the corn here (7:13). Prime stalks are chosen and removed (7:25) and set in piles on the grounds (7:37). The film turns to show how to avoid the corn borer which is a moth of the family Crambidae and a pest of grain (8:24). As the stalk is cut open, the corn borer is made visible (8:28). The farmers set fire to the cultivated field here in order to clear the fields of stubble, weeds and waste prior to planting a new crop (8:58). Corn is husked here (9:15). Close shots slowed down show the farmer pulling the corn with ease from the leafy stalk (9:48). Another shot shows the farmer’s palm held husking tool (9:53). Local farmers move into town for a husking competition (10:11). Farmers work down the rows rapidly as the game begins (10:38). The husks are counted and collected in a white farmhouse (10:47). Farm machinery works to shell the corn for the market (11:03). Corn seeds are funneled into a large bin (11:22). A child plays in the falling corn (11:29). A massive load of corn is unloaded from a rail car (11:55). A sample is pulled (12:06). The process of making corn flakes cereal and corn starch follows (12:43). Hardened slabs of the corn starch are pulled and crumbled (13:03). Stock is fed here which is one of the more common uses for corn (13:15). Pigs are tossed their feed (13:39). The film concludes with a young boy choosing a hefty pumpkin and walking off screen (13:57).<p><p>We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference."<p><p>This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com

Time-Lapse of germinating bean

Cuts (rushes, out takes) for stories in Colour Pictorial - CP 614. The original stories are on Pathe Master tape *PM0379*. <br/> <br/>Cuts for story GROWING AND EATING (aka MUSHROOMS) in CP 614. Mostly similar footage to the cut story. Several shots in the laboratory where the mushroom seeds are germinated. Nice shot of mushrooms in a box. <br/> <br/>Cuts for story SNAKE AND BABY BATH TIME in CP 614. Similar footage to cut story; mostly of the Victorian mother washing and drying her baby at a press conference; good M/Ss of several photographers taking pictures at the conference, holding flash guns. The other babies are seen being washed, dried and held aloft for the photographers. Various shots show Lulu the snake being washed by Julie Mendez. <br/> <br/>Cuts for story DOLPHINS ON THE MOVE in CP 614. Similar footage to the cut story; several shots of the dolphins swimming around in their new pool at Marineland in Cleethorpes, and being transported from their old home. The dolphins do not look particularly keen to be taken from their original pool!

NAME: AUS WHEAT 20080707HZflat TAPE: EF08/0713 IN_TIME: 11:21:47:17 DURATION: 00:06:29:21 SOURCES: AP TELEVISION DATELINE: Poochera, Australia. Recent. RESTRICTIONS: SHOTLIST Poochera, Australia. Recent. 1. Truck rolls past cows, pan to Farmer Glen Phillips climbing onto back to cut loose and then spread feed. 2. Mid shot cows 3. Mid shot Glen Phillips kicking feed off back of truck 4. SOUNDBITE: (English) Glen Phillips, Wheat Farmer: "I reckon there's a lot of people really looking down at the ground right now and hoping like hell its going to rain. We've got to be optimists. We've had bugger all rain this year so we're just hoping like hell there's a lot to come at the end of the winter and a little bit in the Spring. Our long range forecaster tipped that the other day so, not that we take much notice of him neither. But yeah just on a gut feeling, we should get something out of it." 5. Darcy Phillips runs past grain feeder. 6. Close up sheep scrambling for feed 7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Glen Phillips, Wheat Farmer: "Last year's livestock is what carried us through. We had up-towards of 3000 sheep, got a hundred bales of wool, for once we hit good wool prices, so we done quite well out of wool last year but we didn't have the feed to carry them through so we had to quit at least 1500. For this year and since this year's started, we've quitted about another 500 and a lower price because everybody was in the same boat, so yeah sheep have been pretty important for the first two droughts, but if we don't get rain here we won't have a feed, so and the sheep will have to go as well, reduce right down. And the few cattle we've got, they'll definitely have to go, they're the worst mouths to feed." 8. Wide shot tractor putting bale of hay onto truck 9. Close up Glen Phillips driving tractor 10. Mid shot Glen Phillips hand in dirt 11. UPSOUND: (English) Glen Phillips, Wheat Farmer: "The soil should be able to stick together, (close up) and if it's crumbly it means we're taking a fair sized chance. So we're really relying on a winter rain, to get us up and going." 12. Ashley Phillips in truck, gets out and closes door 13. Mid shot wheat seed 14. Close up wheat seed 15. SOUNDBITE: (English) Glen Phillips, Wheat Farmer: "First time ever have to go to a bank and borrow money, about $150 - 200 thousand all told just to put this year's crop in. By the time we pay ourselves a bit of wages or living money, there's not actually wages, we're certainly banking on a good year." 16. Wide shot Phillips family with sowing machinery 17. SOUNDBITE: (English) Darcy Phillips, Wheat Farmer "The last two years we've had very good rains in March, and when I mean very good, 3 inches of rain was our biggest rain in March, April was good, we sowed in April. May was good and then when we hit June that was it, we didn't have another rain for the rest of the season which was end of our winter and into our spring, we virtually watched our crops get that high, nice and beautiful, then wither and die." 18. Darcy Phillips with daughter and wife at dinner table 19. Close up Kathy Phillips. 20. Wideshot Phillips family eating dinner 21. SOUNDBITE: (English) Darcy Phillips, Wheat Farmer "Where we're standing is actually in the fertiliser shed, we need this to put a crop in. The last two years you could probably average the price out of this stuff at about $400 - $450 dollars, while this year we're paying $1200 to $1300 dollars a tonne." 22. Various fields being sprayed 23. SOUNDBITE: (English) Glen Phillips, Wheat Farmer: "The price of everything is probably going to kill us now. We could probably put up with drought, but when you're getting killed in super prices and everything else, we've got to grow at least a 5 bag crop now to pay the bills, so it's making it hellish and tough. The lad's are pretty keen to just go back to sheep but that would only keep one person going so two of us will have to go." 24. Various Darcy Phillips herding sheep 25. Wide shot empty wheat silos LEAD IN Australia is emerging from its worst drought in 100 years. Spanning at times the breadth of the country, the drought savaged wheat crops and helped drive global wheat prices to all-time highs. The Australian government has now forecast a winter wheat crop of 23.68 million tonnes for 2008/09, an increase of 80 percent on last year. However some farmers are feeling a mixture of optimism mixed with trepidation. STORYLINE Glen Phillips has worked this farmland in the State of South Australia for 34 years, taking it over from his father who bought the land in 1949. The wheat farmer from Poochera says life on the land has never been so tough. Drought has forced more than 10,000 Australian farmers off the land. Livestock is what has kept this family farm afloat. Wool from sheep brought high prices. The first year they raised lamb and calves to near maturity they sold them off for a good price. But last year they were forced into an early and cheap sell-off of 2,500 lambs and more than 50 young calves to keep afloat. In 2006, after promising autumn downpours, Phillips watched his crop die off in winter when the rainfall stopped. The same thing happened last year, though he managed to scrounge about one-third of what the land produces in a good year. In two years, he estimates the drought cost him more than half a million dollars, and this season he was forced to take out a loan for the first time to cover the costs of planting and feeding his livestock. But this year, although many areas are still waiting for rain, Phillips says his instinct tells him things will be different. With the help of his two sons, Darcy and Ashley, the farmer has decided to dry-plant nearly 200 thousand dollars of seed across a good portion of the 6000-acre farm. One bumper crop would alleviate much of the financial burden of the drought. Kneeling down and scooping up a handful of dirt, Phillips explains that the soil should be sticky - if it's crumbly it means he and his family are taking a fair sized risk. He opens his hand and the earth sifts dustily between his fingers. Phillips looks up, lifting his hat slightly and squinting into the empty blue sky that has come to symbolise one of Australia's worst droughts on record, and which is reverberating around the world as failing crops in one of the world's largest grain exporters help push up world food prices. The family are going to plant regardless. If things don't turn around this year, Glen's oldest son, Darcy, says he'll have to look for work in the mines or larger cattle Stations. Glenn's wife, Kathy, is already managing the household on a shoe-string. She keeps an expansive vegetable garden that feeds the family all year round, and they slaughter ducks, lambs and cows to eat. Anything else is a luxury until they can earn from their crops again. With no new income, the family has already paid A$12,000 (US$11,330) for cattle feed this year and all their other expenses are soaring - fertiliser is up 30 percent, and weedkiller and diesel fuel costs are skyrocketing. They're worried what impact the steep hike in International fuel and fertiliser will have. They say they'll hold their breath over the next two weeks and pray for the wheat to germinate. Then it will just be a waiting game, to see how many inches of rain will fall ahead of the late November harvest. If not, the family faces a bleak choice. The last two years, Darcy left the farm before spring to work on a ranching station. He said he might be forced to take a longer-term and higher-paying job at the gold mines, as many of his generation are already doing. Ashley, who has a wife and toddler at home, will have to search for work closer to home. The fields will likely lay fallow and Glen and Kathy Phillips will revert to mere caretakers of the property until they can afford to plant again. The stresses are common throughout the region, and reflected in Poochera itself. The local school has shrunk from 170 students a decade ago to just 90 students. Stock agents have left, businesses have closed and the closest doctor is now more than 50 miles (85 kilometres) away. The peninsula, a giant wedge of land jutting into the ocean off southern Australia, forms part of a narrow crescent known as the wheat belt that includes some of Australia's most arable land. It is also among the hardest hit by five years of drought the government says is the most severe since the 1930s. Australia is usually the world's third or fourth-largest exporter of wheat, but its exports dropped 46 percent from 2005 to 2006, then fell 24 percent last year. Australia's most important crop export sent mostly to the Middle East and Southeast Asia to make bread and cereals was once worth over 3 billion Australian dollars per year; in 2007 it had fallen by one-third. The drought is shutting production down just as the world needs it most, with diminished agricultural production worldwide causing a steep spike in prices for everything from wheat to rice to corn. Rising costs have led to unrest in many countries in Africa and Asia. Riots over rising bread prices and shortages have led to at least 10 deaths in Egypt this year. Other nations that fill the world's bread basket - the United States, Canada, the European Union and Argentina are also in a slump, though signs are improving. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says world wheat production for 2008-09 is projected to reach a record 656 million tons, up 8 percent from the year before. But global stocks will remain at historic lows because of years of low harvests. For Australia, which was hit by several years of drought in a row that brought its exports ever lower, the department forecast a strong recovery but acknowledged it will be months before it is known whether the winter growing season has rebounded. "As always, there is uncertainty regarding the size of this crop and its progress will likely be a major factor for the global market," said the World Agricultural Production report released in May. As production slowed, world wheat prices have hit record highs. In early 2007, Australian farmers could sell one ton for (Australian) $ 269 ($259 USD) . A year later the price was A$ 473 ($456 USD) , though it has dropped since then to A$381 ($368 USD).

Cuts (rushes, out takes) for stories featured in Colour Pictorial - CP 614. The original stories are on Pathe Master tape *PM0379*. <br/> <br/>Cuts for story GROWING AND EATING (aka MUSHROOMS) in CP 614. Similar footage to the cut story; mushrooms seen in boxes, moving along conveyor belts in the packing factory; mushrooms being picked from the growing beds. Several shots of the mushroom party food; people eating mushroom nibbles at the party. More shots in the laboratory of mushroom seeds being germinated. <br/> <br/>Cuts for story SNAKE AND BABY BATH TIME in CP 614. All different footage to the cut story. Extremely bizarre sequence shows exotic dancer Julie Mendez watching Rolf Harris on a black and white television with her snake, Lulu. In Julie's home we see a long draught excluder snake on the arm of a sofa; several pictures of Julie in cabaret costume as 'Exotic Snake Charmer'. We then see Julie and Lulu in a demonstration of their cabaret act; Julie in a spangled scanty bikini costume holds Lulu and wiggles about, grinding her hips as the snake slithers between her legs and around her waist. Obviously, too suggestive to make it into the Colour Pic proper. In a pub, Julie drinks a glass of red wine (or sherry), and holds a glass of water (or gin? Vodka?!) for Lulu to sip. A man at the bar chats to a barmaid while they drink, then feigns surprise as he spots Lulu; he causes a fuss and is told to leave by the landlord. C/U of Lulu sinking her head in the glass of water then blowing water bubbles. <br/> <br/>Cuts for story DOLPHINS ON THE MOVE in CP 614. Similar footage to cut story as the dolphins are caught in a net in their original pool and put into a cradle for transportation, then lowered into their new pool.

Time-Lapse of Germinating Lettuce

FOR ABC News - 20/20 147 Columbus Avenue New York, NY 10023 DATE 6/5/08 PROGRAM 20/20 Earth 2100 Alan Weisman, Tp 1-3 BGT NO. 1082724 [BEGIN TAPE 1] [INTERVIEWER OFF MICROPHONE ON ALL TAPES] [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] ALAN WEISMAN [01:01:16:10] The uh... [BACKGROUND NOISE] It, you know Houston co-, could easily become inundated. That entire you know uh infrastructure of oil tanks, and cracking towers, and flares, and pipelines that go from Galveston uh fifty miles up the Houston's Ship Channel to this enormous city, which is big enough I can't remember how I have it in the book, but uh but several cities in the United States, Denver and Boston and, and it's just about five others all fit inside of Houston. [01:01:48:02] And all but a very, very western part of it are actually in the delta and dropping down below sea level. [01:01:57:08] And th-, that would be a very in-, interesting kind of economic and social and infrastructural uh civilization, a loss, you know that we, it's very hard for us to contemplate something as vast as Houston going down. [01:02:15:02] But it is [SIGH] vulnerable to a short term catastrophe, not just you know 'Oops, we've got forty years before the seas rise you know three feet and we need to do something about it.' M. BICKS [01:02:28:24] But, but they're, they're like three meters _____ not three feet. Maybe one to three meters. That's, I mean by the, but somewhere in the course of this century which is just I mean, th-, three me-, like three meters. Like what happens to I mean you know New York in three meters? ALAN WEISMAN [01:02:42:02] Well a ten foot sea rise um is going to leave just high ground above water here. Uh you know there's, there's a hill in Central Park. There's [BACKGROUND NOISE] some stuff uh up at the top of the island. [01:02:57:20] Uh up, up in the Two hundred and forties, um Washington Heights. And ev-, everything else would have to be protected by sea walls. And I could see civilization deciding that Manhattan was important enough to build some remarkable and remarkably expensive sea walls, but ultimately we, they're not gonna be able to do that all up and down our seaboards. [01:03:25:28] Uh the uh, you know the Middle Valley, California is going to be inundated. Probably the entire Imperial Valley of California, that's that lower part that's really part of the delta of the Colorado River, uh that'll be inundated. Most of Florida would be inundated. [01:03:44:18] Um [SIGH] I'd, I'd have to look at some maps of what has been inundated in, in other times but we're talking Pre-Pleistocene times. Uh we've had inland seas before on all these continental land masses and there's no reason why they won't return. M. BICKS [01:04:04:28] All right. Now how quickly, let, let's say we are uh le-, uh, uh let's say there, there's a meter by Twenty-one hundred. Uh, what would that be you know if they don't build sea walls, wha-, what effect would that have to the infrastructure of New York? In other words ho-, how would the city sort of physically collapse? ALAN WEISMAN [01:04:21:03] Well the way I understand it from, subway engineers have taken me down through the bowels of the city, uh to show me what happens even on a sunny day. Uh th-, they've got thirteen million gallons of water that they've gotta deal with because first of all New York's a rainy island and it's already got ground water. [01:04:45:17] Uh the subways are below the water table for the most part. Then there used to be hills. Th-, an-, the name Manhattan derives from an old Algonquin term that means 'hilly.' And there were about forty streams and small rivers that would drain the city to the sea, or, or the forest where the city now is. [01:05:03:17] You know there was a salt marsh leading from a long, shallow lake where the Plaza Hotel is right now, an-, and that went all the way to the East River. This big, broad ridge line that we now called Broadway had streams going either side, and of course there were springs all over. [01:05:21:04] All those rivers got smashed underground when the hills were leveled to superimpose a grid over everything north of Greenwich Village. And as a result th-, the subway engineers have a lot more ground water than New York would normally have. Now of course sewer, a sewer system was built, but sewers are supposed to ____ water away in effect the way nature used to do it. We're never quite as a efficient as nature is. [01:05:50:00] So they keep nearly eight hundred pumps going down there. Now when there's an inch of rain th-, they are on red alert and if there are two inches of rain they're in emergency mode. Th-, those pumps aren't sufficient. [01:06:07:04] They bring in emergency vehicles with diesel [BACKGROUND NOISE] compressors. They bring in emergency vehicles with diesel compressors and they're running hoses down subway steps, and they're pumping subways out into the gutter so it can go off to the East River et cetera. [01:06:18:13] If we were talking about a meter sea rise, uh or even more, uh th-, they're not gonna be able to keep burning these things continually, unless they build brand [BACKGROUND NOISE] new stuff. So my understanding is that the subway tunnels would flood and they would stay flooded. [01:06:44:08] And the columns that hold up the streets, I talked to several civil engineers an-, and, and urban engineers, uh they pointed out that you know most of them, metal, they're steel. They will rust. They will corrode, average of twenty years before they started to collapse. [01:07:01:03] And as they collapse the streets above them start caving in and low and behold we have surface rivers once again in Manhattan. You know the four, five, six line becomes the Lexington River. Uh there are underground rivers. [01:07:15:24] There's one in Harlem that is already rising underneath some tracks I think. Uh, I can't recall the station uh off the top of my head but, but tracks are corroding from underneath so just imagine with th-, sea levels that high, even when you've got the sea contained on the edge of the um uh by sea walls on the edge of the island the pressure of rising sea levels is putting pressure on the fresh water table. [01:07:48:00] It's pushing it up. It's literally squeezing it up. So I would say that the flooding of Manhattan would have a real destabilizing effect because uh urban engineers uh were quick to point out to me when I was researching The World Without Us that on the one hand, uh yo-, your big skyscrapers here are well anchored into Manhattan schist. [01:08:05:00] On the other hand, they weren't designed to be water-logged. [01:08:18:28] And uh water-logged foundations will eventually destabilize and as one of um, um engineer at uh Cooper Union pointed out to me, he says, 'Think of what happens when a big tree falls in a forest. It brings down a lot of other trees. Well it just takes one skyscraper to destabilize and then one hurricane to hit New York and the climatologist suggests that we're gonna be having more or, or stronger, or more and stronger hurricanes in the future, and blow over one big building.' [01:08:52:28] Buildings are gonna start to get taken out. [BACKGROUND NOISE] [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] M. BICKS [01:09:52:25] So how long would it take uh I mean le-, let's just say uh for whatever reason New York got abandoned. How long would it take for it to start to breakdown? ALAN WEISMAN [01:10:03:26] Um th-, the breakdown would be ra-, rather rapid. I mean it, first of all, imagine no street maintenance. You would have uh uh an uncountable number of plastic bags blowing around the city, and within a day or two, or at least after the first rain they would be clogging most of the sewers. [01:10:21:06] So you would have standing water in the streets and then you would have leaf litter that would be blowing in from all the city parks, and it would be accumulating in the gutters. And seeds are constantly blowing around the city particularly in the springtime, so you would get a lot of germination in that very fertile mulch. [01:10:49:21] You would also without sidewalk maintenance, you would have uh su-, su-, um trees, flowers, weeds, mustard, all kinds of plants, coming up through every crack. It's extraordinary how widespread the seeds are and how tenacious and opportunistic they are. [01:11:07:12] Uh they get cleared away every year by sidewalk maintenance people but in an abandoned city, no they'd start coming up. There would be no firemen. So as trees started to sprout, within five to ten years you'd have a lightening strike and there would be a fire. [01:11:31:06] And depending on how much fuel you would have, I mean definitely within the ne-, the first twenty years, there would be a major fire because there'd be dead branches and some office building would catch fire and lightening rides wo-, would likely be corroding them. And there's a good chance that without firemen around that the fire would go from building to building. [01:11:52:12] Insulation in the buildings would burn and paper from the offices et cetera. That would form charcoal that would be good for the soil. It would um, it would add nutrients, and uh every leaking roof in Manhattan would uh, let dr-, water drip down. [01:12:16:24] When it hits the steel reinforcing bar that would start to rust and expand, and the expansion would st-, first start popping facing off of buildings, and then it would start crumbling mortar and crumbling concrete. [01:12:28:27] Crumbling concrete is great for soil because it's got lime in it. And your first soil would be fairly acidic but the more lime ad-, that's added the more it would neutralize the soil, which mean you'd get a succession of new kind of plants coming in. [01:12:47:04] Uh within fi-, five hundred years you'd have a fairly mature forest growing around the ruins of cities. It, anywhere, even in arid country, but certainly here in ne-, in, in New York because there would be a lot of moisture. [01:13:01:04] You know the high-line now, uh this railroad spur that used to run through second story warehouses down in Chelsea, it had no soil whatsoever. Uh it was abandoned in Nineteen eighty and plants started growing just in airborne soot. [01:13:16:02] And the last time I was up there, I ju-, I saw an apple tree it, it was fall, and I mean there were big apples on this thing. Uh, uh, and someone had obviously tossed an apple core and you know the myth that you know apples won't grow from seeds very well, these are pretty robust. [01:13:35:20] But you had a whole variety of wildflowers and ______ trees, you know this Chinese um in-, in-, introduced species which doesn't have any natural predators here in New York. So it and the Amur corktrees that you find I mean, half the species grown in New York Botanical Garden right now are these introduced species, uh that came in as ornamentals or when Olmsted did Central Park you know they brought in all these species, and birds, and plants that appear in Shakespeare's plays so a lot of stuff came over from Europe. [01:14:07:00] Uh [BACKGROUND NOISE] you would find a forest regenerating all over Manhattan and possibly up to half the species would be these introduced species, but some of the native species would start coming back and do real well too. [01:14:22:07] Um I'm told that English Ivy, which we see on a lot of buildings here, would probably get out competed by Virginia Creeper and Poison Ivy. Um. M. BICKS [01:14:30:09] And what about wildlife? ALAN WEISMAN Well um... M. BICKS [01:14:35:19] Uh let's say the city's been abandoned for ten, ten or twenty years. ALAN WEISMAN [01:14:37:25] If okay, it's, the bridges will remain up for at least a couple of centuries. Um uh, the bridge experts took me around Manhattan showed me that uh, uh th-, the problems with bridges arise from when you don't paint them and they begin to rust. [01:15:00:26] Rust is actually protective of steel. It forms uh it, uh it, it forms a, a sort of patina on it. And you're not, it takes a long time to go all the way through plate steel, but as rust expands uh uh, it's gonna end up popping rivets. [01:15:20:28] And more important, the metal bridges that have to expand in, in the summer and contract in the winter, they've got these expansion joints. Bridge maintenance people are constantly cleaning them out during the wintertime when they're wide open because stuff can get in there, a debris, rust if it's not painted. [01:15:43:13] In the summer, if those co-, expansion joints are clogged there's no place for the bridge to expand but it has to physically so it starts straining on the edges where it's connected to the, the mainland and it starts shear-, weakening and then finally just shearing off the bolts. [01:15:58:06] But it's gonna probably take a century or two before we start losing major bridges. So in the meantime this, there, wildlife will be coming into the city. Particularly if there's a sense that there's something to eat here, and Central Park is a good place to start. [01:16:14:25] It's already attracted some coyotes. It's already attracted wild turkeys. Um uh, more coyotes will come, the coyotes that were seen here in New York, New England, seem to be larger than the coyotes out west. Uh ________ just so I've spoken to, suggests that the migratory path for the coyote into the East is up Minnesota, over the Great Lakes, inbreeding wi-, interbreeding with wolves, and um they're gonna be big enough to eat deer. [01:16:46:16] Now would there be deer in Manhattan? Don't see any right now other than in zoos. Um Central Park might be really interesting to them. I kn-, I know there have been movies that have come up that have shown them wandering through li-, lines of parked cars. I don't think they would be there particularly. [01:17:05:20] There's no-, there's nothing to eat. And frankly, there's so much to eat in the suburbs, I'm not sure that deer would be attracted but wildlife sometimes just come cause they're curious or because they're chased. M. BICKS Mm-hmm. ALAN WEISMAN [01:17:17:03] And a coyote could act, co-, uh, uh coyotes and wolves know how to herd and they could actually herd deer over here. So it's possible that Central Park will be um uh, uh, you know will be colonized by them. [01:17:31:17] House cats go, go faro really well. I mean they, uh a house... M. BICKS [01:17:36:07] Excuse me, what goes faro really? ALAN WEISMAN House cats. Uh, I wo-, I, I don't think that we've ever really tamed th-, the house cat. [01:17:44:07] It's identical to a wild cat or a small furred of species that exists around the Mediterranean basin. And I think it just regards us as this easy part of the ecosystem. This two legged thing that brings in good stuff to eat and gives them shelter. [01:07:57:14] But you can feed a cat and put it outside and it's gonna immediately start hunting if it sees, or a, a bird. And there's plenty of birds around here. There's lots of pigeons. Um th-, there are, th-, th-, the cat will be an excellent predator for that songbird and pigeon-sized niche. And uh a lot of raptors will come in. [01:18:17:20] Peregrine falcons, Red-Wing Hawks already live in New York. Uh Ospreys, they're all gonna do really well here without human beings. As um remember the heat will be off, there's no power. [01:18:25:08] So pipes will have burst uh in buildings. Glass will be broken for a number of reasons having to do with what's going inside of buildings, fires, et cetera, and that's all gonna be a great nesting opportunity for uh birds. [01:18:48:10] Rodents will nest in there too. Um I think you know rats th-, th-, the Norway rat that you have here in New York which you know came in on ships, they don't tend to colonize very well out in the countryside. [01:19:02:00] We have native Wood Rat, rats that out compete them. And uh they tend to live mainly on human refuse. There's not gonna be a lot of that around so uh I think the raptors are going to you know uh, do really we-, well. They're gonna eat them pretty quickly. [01:19:17:17] Um domestic dogs will probably get out competed by wolves and coyotes, possibly some big ones will interbreed with them. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] M. BICKS [01:19:38:15] [BACKGROUND NOISE] Now um, you know [BACKGROUND NOISE] [CLEARS THROAT] it's funny because [CLEARS THROAT] [BACKGROUND NOISE] you sort of imagine this as an amp-, I mean you know it's, the world you're talking about is a fantasy. But... ALAN WEISMAN [01:19:48:28] So far. M. BICKS [CHUCKLES] Yeah but now do you ever, I mean... Uh, do you ever think about what could bring it to be? ALAN WEISMAN [01:19:59:21] Well um you know when I wrote The World Without Us initially I thought of three scenarios. You know I thought of what if human beings had never evolved in the first place, uh what the, what the world have been like? Obviously no-, there wouldn't have been any cities so we could discount that one. [01:20:18:08] And then I pose in the book, for the purposes of the book, a very remote possibility theoretically possible, that we disappeared instantly and I really, I dispense with all those possibilities in a chap-, in, in one paragraph towards the beginning of the book. [01:20:34:00] A homosapien specific disease picks us off. Say AIDS became airborne and we all got it rather you know, rather than passed by fluids. [01:20:44:26] Uh we, we all contracted it or Bird Flu, or some evil genius created some virus that was extremely successful, or uh that sterilized us all. Or since a lot of people believe in the Rapture I threw that in, whether it be by Jesus or space aliens. [01:21:01:15] The chance of this happening next week, very small. For my purposes it was just enough to um uh uh satisfy people that we were not talking about a science-fiction book or a you know fantasy book. [01:21:15:26] We are talking about something potential so we could clear human beings away, and then clear all the stuff away that human beings created so we could see what else lives here and how it would regenerate or to what degree it could regenerate without us, and also what would it do with all the stuff we leave behind ranging from our buildings, and plastics, to all the carbon dioxide that we've pumped up the air it, it, uh up, up into the atmosphere, which is gonna take a while uh to calm down. [01:21:41:00] Now there's a third scenario that I allude to and it's always lurking in the background in my book but I don't talk about it directly because there's a lot of books that do talk about it di-, directly and they scare the hell out of people and I wanted to write a book that was not gonna make people say oh this is too se-, frightening, you know. I wanted one that they would read to the end because most environmental books only get read just by other environmentalists [CHUCKLES] or people who are already really interested. [01:22:10:01] But th-, the, the scenario that you are describing is really the one that we all have to be confronting which is are we eating ourselves out of home and planet? Have we become either too powerful or too numerous or both to the extent that we are pushing so many things off the planet that we're going to lose something that we really depend on? [01:0:52:08] Or that are very the, the exhaust literally of our society is going to change the very chemistry of the air around us which is going to change the weather and climate around us to an extent that we can't tolerate it. Uh will it overheat it to the point that we can't live on it or will it change geography because it starts creating higher seas and it's gonna inundate a lot of the places that we've been living. [01:23:08:01] Those are real possibilities. And uh you know it's interesting when I wrote The World Without Us I, I started it because as a [AUDIO INTERFERENCE] journalist I've been all over the world and I've seen so many environmental disasters. [01:23:16:06] You know from Chernobyl, to the Ozone hole, to burning rainforests, I was very concerned about the future of the planet. I'm no longer worried about the future of the planet. The planet has remarkable recovery uh capabilities. [01:23:33:19] Life is incredibly resilient. For all the extinctions that have taken place, new stuff has evolved to fill the niches. We've gone from ne-, next to nothing after enormous extinctions to fabulous ages of dinosaurs. And then when the dinosaurs get demolished by an asteroid, then we come up with a fabulous age of mammals. [01:23:55:06] Planet's gonna be just fine. But the planet as we know it with us on it, that's a real open question and that's a se-, that's a serious one that concerns me a great deal cause I'm a human being and I'm kind of partial to my own species. [01:24:10:03] I'd like us to stick around. M. BICKS [COUGHS] But you know it's an, an, but the thing is I mean this is a fascinating time to be alive because um I mean if, if all these big thinkers are right, just to sort of like you know I mean like the next thirty or forty years really determines... [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] M. BICKS [01:24:41:08] But I mean we're sort of the bottle neck right now, right? I mean [BACKGROUND NOISE] cause there's this whole confluence of I mean I call it 'the perfect storm.' You know between sort of population, resource... ALAN WEISMAN [OVERLAP] Mm-hmm. M. BICKS [01:24:49:29] Depletion, and climate change. I mean we're just uh, how would you describe the time that we find ourselves at now? ALAN WEISMAN [01:24:59:09] Well it's all connected just like the ecosystem is all connected. Uh our population has grown as our resources is, have diminished because the reason our population has grown is that we were already at the limit of our resources and then we came up with all these technological ways of stretching our resource supply, which we thought really solved things. [01:25:27:05] What we didn't understand was it kind of deferred the problem and at a certain point, it actually exacerbated the problem. Things got a lot worse. Let me give you an example. [01:25:36:01] Um at the end of the Nineteenth century [BACKGROUND NOISE] there were one point six billion people on the planet. The planet had never seen so many be-, uh people but, and there were already some indications that we were capable of doing some serious damage. [01:25:54:20] Uh the Passenger pigeon got wiped out right around then and it was the numer-, most numerous species of bir-, uh, uh probably of vertebrae on the planet. I mean uh uh, certainly bird species. [01:26:06:04] You know these enormous flocks that would take hours to pass over. They would be three hundred miles long. And uh you know what happened to them? Well we cleared off so much of their habitat to grow food for ourselves that you'd get uh, trillions of them you know clustered in a couple of trees and it was easily to pick off hundreds, and big fu-, fu-, delicious game bird. [01:26:29:05] And truckloads uh boxcars filled with them came to New York and Boston everyday and, and we actually were able to out hunt them. Well it wasn't just our capability as hunters. We developed some food technologies to uh increase the yields in the middle of the Nineteenth century we started creating artificial fertilizers, and patenting, -ing, them. [01:26:56:19] And we started pushing the planet with chemicals to get bigger yields out of them. Then we started tinkering with plants to select the ones that would, the plant itself would yield more food, you know more wheat berries per st-, per stalk of what. But these plants were selected in the laboratories, so then when we put them out in the fields they needed some kind of protection. [01:27:22:12] So we needed other chemicals to protect them from pests that they did not evolve to defend themselves against. And also for good measure, um herbicides that would clear out competitors for the same nutrients in the soil get even more and more food. [01:27:39:24] [SIGH] The agricultural engineers I think uh didn't pay attention to an important preset of ecology, which is that the population of any species will rise to meet the available food supply. [01:27:54:09] During the Green Revolution we kept hearing that this was going to solve hunger on the planet, but it turned out to be right up there with you know nuclear power is gonna make electricity too cheap to meter. [01:28:07:19] Instead of solving hunger on the planet, the population just kept growing. So today we have many times more hungry people than we used to have and the population doubled, and then doubled again. So today at the end of that century going into the Twenty-first century fe-, we find ourselves with six point six billion people and growing. We're headed to nine point one billion by the middle of this century. [01:28:32:26] You know another fifty percent increase. And uh our medical technologies thankfully, are very good so that keeps you know mortality rate low. It keeps people living longer. All this adds up to more and more people. So what are we doing now to keep stretching our food supply? [01:28:53:20] Well partly we're using even more chemicals. Now we're genetically tinkering with plants, but in such a way that the plants not only do things that they never used to be able to do, but conveniently for the fertilizer makers, and the pesticide, and the insecticide makers, they can't survive without those. [01:29:13:04] So when you buy the seeds you also have to buy the chemicals to treat them. And these chemicals are destroying all kinds of species that we wish they weren't destroying. [BACKGROUND NOISE] I mean today as you and I speak, uh something unprecedented has happened off the coast of California. The, the King Salmon is gone. I mean and this just happened within two years. It just vanished. [01:29:40:24] Uh they have a lot of run off out of the Sacramento you know, uh River, into that Sacramento uh, uh delta. And something seems to have chemically tipped. Uh you know a combination of over fishing and the fact that the chemical run off of all the rivers into estuaries and oceans, which is one of the most fertile places on the planet, it's all been poisoned. [01:30:04:29] The other thing that we're doing is we're scraping away more land to grow more food. We're scraping away a lot of the tropics, Indonesia, Africa, Central America, North and South America, to grow crops. [01:30:16:23] Well [BACKGROUND NOISE] two bad problems there. Nobody's paying attention to what chemicals they're using, and they're using some of them that are even worse than what we use here because we outlaw them. DDT is slathered all over Central America and South America. I go there frequently and I can testify to that. [01:30:33:20] Second, when we [BACKGROUND NOISE] get rid of natural habitats in those areas, we're knocking down trees and other things that are important feeding areas and rest stops for all of our migratory species. [01:30:47:19] And on every continent now, everybody's noticed that the bird populations are plummeting precipitously. [01:30:54:00] We don't hear as many songs in our forests. I live in a forest in New England and I can testify to that one, too. Uh... [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] [END 1]

TAPE 5 / FTG FOR A BILL WEIR CS VO ON THE FUTURE OF MADAGASCAR / MADAGASCAR IS HOME TO SOME OF THE MOST REMARKABLE AND RAREST ANIMALS IN THE WORLD AND MANY OF THESE ANIMALS ARE FOUND NOWHERE ELSE / THE AVERAGE ANNUAL INCOME THERE IS ONE OF THE LOWEST IN THE WORLD SO THEY HAVE TO MAKE THEIR LIVING BY TEARING DOWN ITS NATURAL FORESTS AND ITS EARTH / INTV W/ GUY LARIN AND MANON VINCELETTE FROM THE RIO TINTO MINING GROUP / FTG OF QMM / FORT DAUPHIN 5;00;19 Start Madagascar street scene 5;00;49 Driving down the street (great natural sound even from vehicle). 5;2;40 Madagascar at night. Pan right. 5;3;57 Loading plane. Can see Bill Weir in shot with his small videocamera 5;4;23 Propeller shot 5;04;33 Bill Weir getting into plane 5;4;45 Loading up cameras Bill Weir getting into plane again (different angle) 5;5;30 Weir getting into van 5;5;43 "Aeroport de Taolagnaro" sign outside of airport. Zoom out to see van with Weir in it. 5;5;56 Village in daytime with mountains behind it. Zoom in on mountains with houses below it 5;6;17 Walking through what looks like sludge in construction gear 5;7;21 (One of the men/wind makes much of what he says indistinguishable) If you look here you can see the.sand itself has a tendency to separate and that's the beauty of in the separation process. It's actually quite easy to do-you can see the black sand in there. And that's the heavy mineral that we're looking for. And you'll see layers here. And a particular good example of it is behind us. 5;7;51 Another view of the sand/mineral stuff shows their exact location. 5;8;7 We're going to make our way up towards the north at first. And what's going to happen is we're going to use the water canon to take down the front of this dune. So from the top of the dune down to the bedrock, on average at this deposit, we've got about twenty meters. And what is going to happen is the back of the mine deposit is going to be refilled in with the white sand. And that's going to be new ground. We're going to have to refigure the ground. And then ___ takes over. She's going to put back the topsoil, enriching the soil. And she's going to be putting in either commercial species or the endemic species that come from this region. As we get closer to the conservation zone, which is about 12% of this deposit. As we get closer to that we're going to try to expand habitat if we possibly can, so that the somewhat degraded forest that we have left can expand and we can bring in the local fawner species. So that rehabilitation program is extremely important to this project as a whole because the world is watching projects like this. And if we don't leave a positive legacy-what we call net positive impact, it's extremely deleterious to the environment. It's an obligation that we've set for ourself. 5;9;40 Weir: But that's somewhat of a radical mind set in the world of mining, isn't it? Man: It is Weir: Leave it better than you found it? 5;9;47 It's becoming more common. It's becoming more of the today's paradigm to mining-particularly in third world environments. It's very difficult for a mining company to come in and do what may have been done before. In other words, you come in, you devastate and you leave. You can't do that anymore. 5;10;12 Weir: What prompted that shift in mindset because ultimately a business-conscious doesn't keep the stockholders happy. 5;10;27 Well, shareholders and stockholders are people and people care about the environment. And unless you got a very well defined environmental plan, a social plan, and you establish and you have that mindset. The shareholders are concerned and we need to demonstrate to our shareholders that this matters. And we have to establish in our own mindset that we care of it. And if we don't then we're not acting responsibly-especially in area like this where we have so much to contribute. 5;11;01 Weir: How many employees? 5;11;06 During the construction phase, we're going to have somewhere between 2,000 and 2400 employees. Those are the contracted employees and our own employees. At a steady state, when the dredge is working and everything is operational-we'll have about 600 employees in the mine and about 200 employees in the port. 5;11;24 Weir: And how many of those will be locals? 5;11;28 Our present, with the 2200 we have approximately right now-56% are locals. Those are unskilled, semi-skilled and a little bit of skilled employees. Our objective is to build up that skill set so we can take on as many as possible from the region here and keep people from the outside, expatriates, to a bare minimum. Let local people. 5;11;56 Weir: And for those that don't draw a paycheck directly-how will it help the economy? 5;12;03 One of the major elements. There are two major factors. First of all, you're looking at royalties and you're looking at tax revenue from this project. That's going to amount, at a steady state, to about 20 million dollars a year. How the government establishes the division of that, what goes to the central government and what goes down here will be extremely important. We would like to see as big of proportion as possible come back to the region so the local authorities can improve the lifestyle, quality of life that is down here, which as you saw before is in dire nee of improving. There are other ways that we are improving the economy-building this port. It's a port that was originally considered for the mine but it's also a port that is very important for the development of the economy for exports of fisheries, for container loading and unloading. There are very many options for the local economy. We are disenclaving this region because this is boxed in. There are very few roads coming to this area. It takes three days to drive here on very iffy roads. But putting in the port gives the government an incentive to improve the roads and basically unlock the southern half of Madagascar. 5;13;27 And provide the opportunity for export of mining and other commodities, including fisheries. I think there is a very high potential for this area. 5;13;35 Weir: Well show me what exactly you're pulling out of here. 5;13;49 I don't need the bottle but I will take a sip. 5;14;09 You can see here the ulminite and that's this black shiny mineral. Now take a handful of it. Gravitationally, as I shake it, it's almost like panning. You'll see most of it is black sand now. After the mineral flurry, mixture of sand and water, goes down the spiral the light mineral goes to the outside and the heavier mineral goes to the inside. It's super simple, you got a little spoon that splits out and divides the black sand from the white sand. And the black sand is what we keep. And we further separate in the mineral separation plant that is just a little bit north of here. 5;15;05 Weir: And the black sand is worth 100 dollars a ton. 5;15;09 $100-120, yea in today's market. So it's not a lot of money for the work we're doing but the tonnages are fairly significant. So you can see the ulminite and the heavy mineral in my hand. And so that's not particularly exotic but it will bring quite a lot to this region. 5;15;32 Weir: And when you consider that 10% of the global supply is right here. 5;15;59 Is in this southern part of Madagascar, right. The three deposits that we have ____, this being the Mendina deposit. When you combine those three, yea it's 10% global supply-at 750,000 tons per year. So it's extremely important and the timing had to be just right in the marketplace so that we make sure that we don't upset markets for all intensive purposes. 5;16;46 It'll probably go down on average another 18 meters. So the pond is going to be fairly deep. This is just a small cross section of what we're going to have. All we want to do now is float that plant, that dredge. 5;17;07 But eventually the bucket wheels will be going down and pumping the flurry back to the main plant which is going to be over there. It's difficult to give you perspective of the height of the plant but it's about 8-10 stories high. And those pontoons will essentially hold up the whole facility, which is thousands of tons. It's hard to believe when you see these pontoons that they actually float. But they do. So you'll have the front end which is the bucket wheel and gun which is going to be here. And it's going to be shooting down here and we'll be putting the rest back at the end. 5;17;51 Weir: How much will your company spend before you mine the first shipload of this stuff. 5;17;54 Roughly six hundred million dollars. 5;18;00 And how much, are you still working on the old figure with the government or has that been refigured? 5;18;06 No it's been rejigged a bit. Their contribution is roughly 20% So far they haven't put any money in to it. But when they ship that first ultimate ton overseas they're going to have reconsider it. They'll have to tell us they want anywhere up to 20% so they can buy, anywhere between 2 and 3 and 20%. And they'll have to find the where with all to fund that. They know what the royalties will be. If that's sufficient for them-that's going to be there decision. 5;18;41 Weir: So they can choose to just take the royalties, which is how much? 5;18;49 The royalties in taxes for this particular deposit will be roughly 20 million a year. 5;18;58 Weir: So the government can take that and be satisfied or they could buy 20% of the mineral and make their own profit off of that. Switch to interview with Manon 5;19;22 But the legume system is interesting but the amnesty is not as interesting. Weir: So what was this before the mine? 5;19;33 Manon: So if you look at that side it's sort of a savannah that is the result of many many years of forest degradation, cuttings. So this was all covered by forest long time ago. We started to look at the satellite image in 1950 for this specific area. Already in 50 there was a lot of deforestation. But if you look at a sample from the area, we knew it was all covered by forest. And then after fire, cutting, the result is this type of Savannah. It's bush-it was all covered by that here. Weir: At one point it was covered by lush service. The people slashed and burned it. You have this. Does any wildlife survive in it? 5;20;34 Manon: Well very little. We did a lot of survey. There's still, for sure, some wildlife. It's nothing compared to the forest that was there before. There are no more lemurs, even the reptiles and amphibians-it's too dry now. The forest keeps them moist and everything. 5;20;54 Weir: So if this plan goes well, if this goes as planned, once they get the mineral you will replant the forest like it was even before this. 5;21;05 Manon: Not exactly. We have two scenario. The literal forest left is patches of forest and the company agreed to set aside the best block of forest that we will see later. Then after the mining, one of the scenarios is to plant species, species that will provide between 8, even 6-8 years, product like charcoal, wood, what people need around here. And to stop them cutting the literal forest, or the natural forest. This is one of the scenario of rehabilitation. This has nothing really to do with biodiversity but at least its resource and product for people. Around the conservation zone, where we have set up here the best bloc. The plan is to double this side and to restore the forest. So we will see later, we harvest the seed, we germinate the seed, and we have a process of succession to reconstruct the forest. We pioneer species, like the sun first. But it's a long term process because these species are really long. But we want to do that along, around the corridor of the forest. You have the dispersal to the animals. And we look to the floral too related to the fauna. We look at reptiles too and the birds. 5;22;49 Weir: But is there an idea, is the hope for how many acres of mine you want to equate that in terms of new forest. Is there a trade off going on here? Or it doesn't, the map isn't that simple? 5;23;06 Manon: We have a figure. You have about 10% left as forest-that'll we'll mine here. So 10% will be reconstruct as forest. We have already set aside as conservation, so that's going to be 20% as literal forest. Then 15% is wetland. Wetland, the biodiversity isn't that important-but there's a very important economy. You know there's a very important reed that grows, women all around here harvest the reed to produce hats, and baskets. So this will be restored as well. So that's going to be 25% of restoration. The rest, so 75% will be, fast-growing species, plantation. It will be more value than what we have now. Because it was like that for many years. And there's no village in this area because the soil is too poor. It's worthless. People, you know they need good land. So land wasn't really used really, except for the woods. 5;24;20 Weir: So there's no way they're going to stop making charcoal. You can't convince them of that? So you give them a different kind of wood to burn? 5;24;33 Manon: And faster and magic things, for example you cut it and you can have a different rotation many many times you know we can have 10 rotations. So we don't have to plant again. And then we can do some agricultural and then we can work with them, train them, to improve the technique. So this area is much much more valuable then it is now-with the forest-and we can keep now. But it's a long work with the population. Nobody understood when we started the conservation work 10 years ago but now they realize the importance of forest-it's their pharmacy. It's the place where they have shade. So now they work with us to conserve the forest. And we have to find alternatives. We cannot say stop going to the forest to cut trees. But we develop a culturalism project. So all the tourists pay a fee to visit. 5;25;43 Weir: So let me ask you this: personally, because you love the forest. You've been a conservationist your whole life-you're devoted to it. So much of your work is I suppose devoted to fighting development. And then a mining company calls you-what was your reaction? 5;26;01 Manon: Well, I don't think we, even if you love forest and conservation, you should never fight development. but not development at any price. I think this country needs development. I mean it has the potential. It has resource. But it should be developed in a responsible manner-socially and environmentally. And for me, I think to be inside the company and to work as a confident for a company, you can really change the design of the mining or some of the economic, and industrial because of the social and environmental aspect. You know the company set aside more than 10% of their deposit for conservation. I think it's a good achievement and it will improve this land. I see that as a success. 5;26;59 Weir: You jump at the chance to help them? 5;27;00 Manon: Yes, exactly. I think you have more influence if you can work for the company. But you have to have a good argument for sure. But it's a discussion and it's a balance. You cannot be extreme in both sides-you have to balance, develop the area, work with people that there's a trickle down to the population, and the biodiversity is conserved and even improved. I think we can do that. And we have already started because me and my team, it's been 11 years since we started the project and have put in different measures. 5;27;43 Weir: Alright, you're very articulate and very passionate about what you do. And that's good for us. So tell me what we're going to see when we go over there. 5;28;9 Manon: So now we're going to go to one of the conservation zones that we have set up with the population and the government in 2002. It's been now 5 years. It's an area that won't be mined. It's an ecological center. So we'll see a nursery, see the treatment, center, some restoration work, some animal, and an information center. 5;28;34 Wide shot of Weir and Manon talking. 5;28;40 Manon: He's a predator of the lemurs. But it's very very difficult to see normally in the wild. But now we have. The lemurs that we translocated, there was touches of forest that were treated by charcoal makers. We found it was best to catch them and translocate them into the conservation zone to protect them. Then it was fine for many years. 5;29;25 Weir: Wonbo was just telling me-he was describing this species as a mixture of a cat and dog-and that's the only predator in Madagascar? 5;29;31 Manon: Yes only predator, mammal predator. Well sometimes you have the big birds

Sowing wheat by hand, germinating plant, pea. Time Lapse