Agriculture, And The Associated Consumption Of Food

After learning about the statistics of how much agriculture consumes our planet, I was appalled to see how destructive it is. Jonathan Foley put into perspective the increase and rapid demand for food. Agriculture alone consumes 40% of our land surface, 70% of our irrigation system, and

Over the next forty years, global population is expected to reach nine billion people. This increase in population, combined with expected economic growth, will cause an increase in food demanded and inevitably drain the resources we use for food production. So far, agriculture has been able to respond positively to the rising demand for crop and livestock products. However, farmers are already faced with many new challenges associated with feeding an expanding global population. Farmers must now meet strict new emissions requirements and produce more food on fewer acres while minimizing their environmental footprint. The demand for food is expected to grow substantially in the next couple decades. Some of the factors affecting an increase in food demands are population growth, rising incomes of individuals, food supply factors, and biofuels.

To conclude, our current way of agricultural life is not sustainable. The article “What’s for supper” has made me realize that if I hope for a better future for generations to come I should support a locally sourced lifestyle. This article is an eye opener to me and proved to me the importance of supporting locally grown produce. Locally grown produce supports the environment as well as jobs for people in the community. The current system takes a toll on every species on the planet. Humans are overproducing on a massive scale and are wasting close to half of our supplies and

With soil being washed away nearly 10 – 40 times faster than it is being replenished1, every single idea to avert this this crisis needs to be considered. No till farming, a method by which farmers implement a way of growing crops with minimal disturbance to the soil and the soil’s abiotic and biotic components, is a very important idea that is being employed worldwide with notable results. With food prices rising and people turning to their own backyards to grow food, the potential advantages of small scale no till can play a major role in the health and regeneration of our

It is known that industrial farming allows a systematic production of food to feed millions of people. Yet the environmental impacts due to “industrial farming”

Sustainable agriculture is the idea to agriculture that prioritize in fabricating food in a manner that does not demean nature and does not threaten human or animal 's health. Sustainable agriculture provides high quality produce without diminishing resources and natural systems that productivity rely on. A study by the University of Michigan, compared data from one hundred studies of sustainable and conventional agriculture, concluded that a universal transformation to sustainable agriculture could in fact expand international food production to approximately fifty

Local sustainable farming has many attributes, but one of the most important is to preserve the quality of the environment. Even though farming is not a new concept, many people do not know what it is or how it works, yet most of them think that food just comes from supermarkets. The current industrial agriculture system have improved the yields of production by growing monocrops such as corn and soy, which in turn is leading the land to erosion. It has also implemented the use of new technologies, mechanization, chemical products, and government policies (Ingels, Campbell 1.) However, it has had significant costs. Land deterioration, water contamination, and human health problems related to diet are some of them. As the industrial farms, sustainable farms also have high yield of production. As shown in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” Polyface, a local sustainable farm located in virginia, produces in a season: 30,000 dozen eggs, 10,000 broilers, 800 stewing hens, 25,000 Lbs of beef, 25,000 lbs of pork, 1,000 turkeys, and 500 rabbits (14). Opposite to Industrial farming, local sustainable agriculture is helping the land recover thanks to the implementation of multicropping and the use of

With the global climate rising, human population progressively increasing, and our current administration peeling away environmental regulations, taking care of our earth has become more of a priority than ever before. A growing issue is finding a sustainable agriculture method: one that meets society’s food needs whilst also keeping in mind future generations to come. Finding an efficient and effecte solution has been a controversy for years. The debate stems from the idea of survival versus morality and preservation. Regardless of conflicting views and standpoints, the issue regarding agricultural practices affects all.

Horrigan L., Lawrence R. S., & Walker, P. How sustainable agriculture can address the environmental and human health harms of industrial agriculture. Environmental Health Perspectives, 110 (5), 445-456.

In the next few decades, the human kind will be driving species to extinction 1000 times faster than normal, accounting for the largest mass extinction in 65 million years (Ceballos). And the cause of this devastating fact is climate change which is destroying and altering millions of species habitats. But what is the leading cause of climate change? Excess transportation exhaust? Natural gas production? Oil production? Excessive industrial bases releasing uneeded amounts of gas into the atmosphere? No; the answer is rather surprisingly unknown- animal agriculture. In the current state of unsustainability, there are many interrelated issues the human race faces today due to animal agriculture such as fresh water scarcity, collapse of sea life ecosystems, unprecedented extinctions and loss of biodiversity, food security and agricultural land use inefficiencies, implications in human health and disease, questions of social justice, and implications regarding future generations.

The Brundtland report defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” From early times, philosophers, such as Thomas Malthus, believed humanity could not be sustained. Malthus believed mankind would reach their carrying capacity, specifically with regards to food. Yet, this notion changed in subsequent years, thanks in part to the green revolution. This revolution helped increase crop yields due to new fertilizers, pesticides, etc. While there became more food available, sustainability, with regards to producing food in an environmentally friendly way, ran into some difficulties. While the Brundtland commission defined sustainability, there are three components that must be integrated for the well-being of all—social, environmental, and economic. Each component of sustainability must be looked at critically when considering the sustainable use of any resource. While many simply worried about having enough food available in the world, one must think of food sustainability with regards to environmental, economic, and social implications. As follows, the importance of food sustainability will be discussed, along with the attempts to measure food sustainability.

“The UN along with other agencies reported that not only did livestock play a major role in global warming, it is also the leading cause of resource consumption and environmental degradation destroying the planet today.” (Andersen & Kuhn, 2014). It is important, then, to consider the effects of animal agriculture on the environment. This essay will argue that animal agriculture is harmful to the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water- and land use, and that policies in the form of subsidizing plant foods, altering the Canada Food Guide, and creating plant based nutrition coaching and support groups should be enacted to solve these problems. The first section of this paper will outline scholarly literature on the effects of animal agriculture on the environment. This paper will then discuss why a plant based diet is also suitable for optimal health. Finally, this essay will conclude with an overview of the various social policies that must be executed to solve these environmental issues.

In this regard, activities such as minimum tillage, crop rotation, and crop residue retention are some of the farming practices that serve to maintain water quality. Minimum tillage, for example, helps in ensuring least disturbance to the soil, implying that the soil particles remain intact and not exposed to agents of soil erosion such as wind and water. Crop residue retention and crop rotation practices on the other hand maintain the soil structure, and thus ensure that the soil is less susceptible to soil erosion, implying that pollution on water sources through soil erosion is significantly hampered (Thierfelder & Wall,

In order to avoid mass malnutrition, there needs to be a 70% increase in food production by 2050 (Isaacson 2015). One way to increase crop yield to meet this need is to use more land to produce more food. However, 40% percent of the planet’s total landmass is already used for agriculture (Isaacson 2015). Where could we find the land and resources to sustain such an increase in food production? To address these issues, we could slash and burn forests to create arable land and increase agricultural inputs such as water and fertilizer. However, destroying forests exacerbates climate change, and there already exists a lack of natural resources. A more effective solution to the issue of food shortage is to use genetic improvement of crops.

During the pioneering era when both Maori and Europeans settled, 85% of lowland native forests were devastated, numerous species became extinct, wet lands were drained and huge quantities of New Zealand soil was damaged due to different agricultural processes. New Zealand’s leading environmental problems are based around agriculture, and these problems are not only in the past but the present and they are not stopping but actually continuing to degrade New Zealand’s natural resources (Ecologic, 2016). The following report will contain information from several different sources on the subject of how New Zealand Agriculture holds responsibility for their effects on the environment, and what effects are actually being caused by the industry. It will be describing how New Zealand’s agriculture industry affects our environment, limitations and constraints for the future, the implications the industry is currently facing alongside the future implications, and then about the procedures that helps to prevent the negative effects. The main objective is to focus on if the agriculture industry is aware of their effect and to see if it is trying to minimize negative environmental consequences to the country.