MALAYSIA: Workers begin their day on a palm oil plantation in Sungai Buloh. The fruit clusters are cut down using 50-foot poles and then transported to a mill for processing.

Images in this series are part of The New York Times series titled “The Food Chain.” The series examines the growing demands on, and changes in, the world’s production of food. These images are singles I took on assignment for this series in 2008. The 3 assignments cover palm oil shortages in Malaysia, inflated fertilizer prices in Vietnam effects on crops, and the effects of drought on Australia’s livestock and rice production:

— MALAYSIA —

MALAYSIA: Workers collect the fruit that is scattered about from the long fall.

Workers sort through palm fruit bunches at a palm oil mill in Sitiawan, Malaysia. Besides the fruit and kernal used to produce crude oil, the whole bunch is put to use for fertilizer and heating the boilers at the mill.

— VIETNAM —

 

Truong Thi Nha, 51, stood in her cornfield in the village of Xuan Canh near Hanoi, Vietnam. Standing just 4 1/2 feet tall, she explained that her growth was stunted by childhood hunger and malnutrition.

— AUSTRALIA —

Farm worker Noel Barington, 54, turns up some soil to prepare the lot for an undetermined crop that will depend on rainfall.

Part-time Drover(sheep herder)Shane Ryan rounds up a few sheep for inspection to a local ranger in Hay, Australia. The region has been plagued by severe drought for more than six years.

Frank Cox handles the maximum number of sheep allowable by the Hay Rural Lands Protection Board, 3000. Typically Drovers(stock herders) get more work during a drought but due to the severity of this drought (more land being protected by the Rural Lands Protection Board) work has been tough to come by for Cox. Until a recent rain near Hay, Cox had been out of Droving work for most of 2007.