New Changes and Emerging Disturbances to Agriculture

In the 1990’s cereals and grain were popular in Africa, with over 60 percent of the land used for these crops (ita 2004). From the 1930’s to the 1990’s Africa saw a reduction of 13 percent in agriculture’s share (ita 2004). During the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a period of drought that affected both the crops and native plant in the area (Boffa Dixon Garrity 2012), which may have contributed to the decline of agriculture’s share. Also, in 1992 the production of corn fell from 10 million to 3 million tons, due to the drought (ita 2004).

Farming has changed dramatically in the past 100 years. There are many ways farming has changed, but in these few pages we will focus on these four main points: life on the farm, equipment, crops and distribution of products. Farming still involves a lot of hard work, but it is certainly not as labor intensive as it once was. The life of a farming family is also quite different. Back then the work involved back breaking manual labor because tractors and other elaborate equipment were just becoming available. Now days, there are many types of tractors and other high tech farm equipment to help with the heavy labor. The number of types of crops a farmer grows has decreased, while the average number of acres per farm has increased over the years.

Slash and Burn agriculture is a method that involves cutting and burning of plants in the forest to give another room for planting. However in this method the land is only fertile for couple of years and farmers need to abandon the land and move to another plot. The effects of it are deforestation, loss of habitat and species, it also effects climate change, soil

Land use changes, as described by Lappé, include every change of land in order to produce, or distribute, food. Annually, forests, bogs, swamps, rain forests, and other biomes are Ableman 1 destroyed for agricultural purpose. Destruction of these biomes lead to the release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which is the most prominent greenhouse gas. The second “connection” in The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork is the “agricultural connection.”

The farmers have faced many challenges including droughts, and wildfires. With the challenges there are advantages to help prepare for future challenges.

Mayan civilization underwent massive developments in agriculture and within their society. According to historian Sylvanus Griswold Morley, Maya Maize agricultural practices have remained the same as they were over three thousand years ago. (Morley 128) A uncomplicated process of felling the forest, burning dried trees and bushes, planting, and switching up the spots of the cornfields every few years. This system is known as the milpa agriculture, pulled from the Aztec word for cornfield. Agricultural tools were fire-hardened, the Maya xul, a pointed planting stick, the baat, a stone axe, chim, a fiber bag for carrying the seed corn. At first, they used sticks to punch holes into the ground, but progressively obtained more advanced farming techniques. Their main crops they grew were maize (corn), beans, squash, avocados, chili peppers, pineapples, papayas, and cocoa, which was used for

Ranching by animal grazing threatens arid grasslands. If too many animals graze on a plot of land for too long they will overgraze, damaging the plants too harshly to recover. Farmers deforest the land to farm, often stripping the land of nutrients as well and do not manage their land effectively. In result, farmers can only work the land for a few years before having to move onto the next plot of forest. Farming on land depleted of nutrients and carbon becomes much more difficult (4).

The soil used for farming in the savannas is becoming increasingly nutrient poor and acidic. Grain acts as both the main source of income and food, but the crop yield continues to lessen, because of the depreciating soil quality. Therefore, the crops need to change in order to replenish the soil and increase crop production. Also, by only growing a few crops and shipping the majority of their harvest, those

Farming in Africa is inadequate and inefficient. The fertility of the soil is becoming depleted and severely reducing the amount of crops from each harvest (Ayieko). This problem is due to over farming the land and not allowing for crop rotation to replenish the nutrients in the soil. This is a practice that is used by most farmers around the globe. Continuing on this trend will risk the land becoming barren and unable to support plant life.

Soil is the most important element for agricultural ecosystems. Healthy soil comes with beneficial microbes and insects. Unfortunately, these are often killed off by the abuse of pesticides. Healthy soil can produce strong crops that are less vulnerable to pests. Damaged soils often need strong fertilizers application to produce a high amount of crops. Soil quality can be amplified in many ways, including leaving crop remainders in the field after harvest and adding composted plant material (Union of Concerned Scientists) Compared to industrial agriculture, companies continue to damage and consume natural soil. While intensive plowing and monocrop (does not rotate) agriculture systems have caused nutrient exhaustion and soil erosion. Excessive application of fertilizers and pesticides has contaminated soils and polluted waterways (Grace Communications Foundations)

However, forest and land fires are problems that arise in forest fire control rules in particular for opening of agriculture and plantation area. Whenever be traced again, in

Farming, it’s what keeps the Earth’s inhabitants fed. Farming is definitely something that changes over time. It is no question that farmers are now more efficient than ever before. This is in part because of their better machinery and techniques. Many people do not know about the history of farming. Farming truly is what it is today because of where it was in the past. The main things to change over time consist of crop differences, farmers and land, and the tools that were used to cultivate and harvest the land. The Native Americans and early Americans made many improvements to farming and farming technology, which is the reason for why farming is what it is

farmers need to create more tillable space, one option has been for them to decrease the

Prior to reading this week’s course material, I had considered the possibilities of agroterrorism but only considered potential attacks and effects against plant life such as corn. Since corn is a major source of food for people, animals, and bio-fuel such as the 10% ethanol mix in our gasoline, I was aware of the economic factors associated with a disruption in its supply along with the consumer level cost increases and loss of faith in our agricultural system’s security. The difficulty in compromising a sufficient amount of the corn supply in America to achieve the desired goals did not escape me either and I thus ranked the probability of an attack against agriculture as low. The reading this week forced me to look at agricultural vulnerabilities from the perspective of disease

In synopsis, this project mainly focuses on the differences in freshwater communities in Taranaki, caused by anthropogenic stressors, such as agriculture and invasive biota. According to the results of this study, agricultural land use has clearly differentiated the composition of both fish and invertebrate communities in selected habitats, while the presence of brown trout has caused relatively limited changes in the similarity structure, appeared only in the fish community. Therefore, the impact of agricultural land use is widely evident on the overall freshwater community structure and composition, compared to the effect of introduced brown trout in Taranaki streams.