Agriculture and Pollution
Agriculture can contribute to pollution through the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can contaminate water sources and soil. Livestock farming also produces methane and ammonia emissions, contributing to air pollution. Additionally, agricultural activities can lead to soil erosion and deforestation, further impacting the environment.
7 Key excerpts on "Agriculture and Pollution"
eBook - ePubPopulation, Agriculture, and Biodiversity
Problems and Prospects
- J. Perry Gustafson, Peter H. Raven, Paul R. Ehrlich(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- University of Missouri(Publisher)
...During the twentieth century, this rate of loss of productive land accelerated sharply, to a rate of 70,000 km 2 (an area greater than the size of West Virginia) every year. Going forward, it is widely recognized that humanity can survive only by embracing truly sustainable pathways of agriculture development (NRC, 2010). In this chapter, we do not attempt to provide ultimate answers to such existential questions, but we do seek to succinctly summarize current scientific understanding of how agriculture contributes to environmental pollution, and also how pollution in turn impacts agricultural systems. This bilateral interaction is unavoidable and has become an essential part of the challenge for humanity to create a sustainable world. As our title suggests, sustainably growing enough food for the 10 billion inhabitants expected by mid-century is indeed making the planet a very crowded two-way street: Food production and environmental considerations must each mutually yield to the other in order to avoid a catastrophic collision of interests. The structure of our chapter is as follows. We begin by examining the primary way that agriculture is now believed to contribute to environmental pollution: via its impact on water quality, especially surface water. There are other agricultural processes that have polluting potential, such as in China, where heavy metals have been found to accumulate in agricultural soils under certain scenarios when copper has been used in animal feed, which then causes soil contamination when the animal manure is used as crop fertilizer (Xiong et al., 2010). If one takes the perspective that the generation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a form of air pollution, then agriculture is an important sector, serving as a major global source of both methane (primarily via rice farming) and nitrous oxide (primarily through the use of inorganic nitrogen-based fertilizers)...
eBook - ePubWaste
A Handbook for Management
- Trevor Letcher, Daniel A. Vallero(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
...The breeding and domestication of plants and animals to increase production was a key driver for the development of the earliest civilizations and continues to be our best hope for supplying the food needs of people around the globe. Consequently, agriculture covers a significant part of the earth's land surface (around 37% overall, see Fig. 28.1), is a major user of resources (e.g., water: accounting for approximately 70% of all global abstractions [1]), and has the potential to lead to a wide range of negative environmental impacts. Nevertheless, it is a highly varied sector, which often includes a large number of small businesses, utilizing a wide range of systems to produce a bewildering array of plant- and animal-derived products, each of which faces its own mix of waste and pollution management challenges. This mix is also spatially variable, with different farm types, business sizes, and intensities of production in different locations. Just within the United Kingdom, for example, grazing livestock tend to be concentrated toward the north and west of the country, while field scale arable and horticultural production is located more toward the south and east. Fig. 28.1 Proportion of agricultural land in different regions of the world [2]. Since the Second World War, there has been a significant change in the way in which the industry has operated, particularly (but not exclusively) in the developed world. This has involved an explosion in the use of inorganic fertilizers (Fig. 28.2), including nitrogen-based fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate and urea derived from industrially produced ammonia (e.g., through the Haber-Bosch process), and phosphorous and potassium fertilizers from mineral sources...
eBook - ePubHuman Ecology
The Story of Our Place in Nature from Prehistory to the Present
- Bernard Campbell(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...9 Agriculture and Pollution In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’ Genesis 3:19 Figure 9.1 Agriculture is believed by many scholars to have originated independently as a result of a series of remarkable coincidences in a number of different regions. The earliest was most probably the region of the fertile crescent, the foothills surrounding Mesopotamia. But other developments soon followed in Upper Egypt, Pakistan, China (possibly by diffusion) and soon after in the New World—almost certainly an independent discovery. HORTICULTURE AND AGRICULTURE These terms are used to describe two distinct patterns of farming. Horticulture is the husbandry of a mixed group of food plants in a garden, near a dwelling. This is a widely distributed means of raising crops, which is most typically found in tropical areas of Central America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The method maintains a considerable diversity of species within the area cropped, and the gardens tend to be isolated among the surrounding wild vegetation. The great advantage of horticulture is the diversity of species maintained, so that no large stands of single species are planted. This helps to preserve the crops from the sort of epidemic infestation of disease and pest which tend to infest field agriculture. Again we see that diversity carries with it stability, and great oscillations in the productivity of horticultural crops are not usual. On the boundary between horticulture and agriculture we find the technique of shifting cultivation or field-forest rotation which is typically practised in rain forest areas. This method, which is perhaps best called swidden agriculture, involves the clearance of small areas of rain forest which are planted with a variety of crops. 1 It is also characterized by great diversity of species, and in the Philippine islands as many as forty varieties of cultivated plant may be grown in a single three acre plot...
eBook - ePub- Bryan L. McDonald(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...The chapter considers environmental impacts in five major sectors: land and soil; water use and water quality; habitat and biodiversity loss; energy use; and climate change. The chapter concludes with a discussion of ways to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and food production. This discussion focuses particular attention on the need to develop food systems that provide for human needs while also aiding efforts to both mitigate and adapt to processes of global environmental change, a process that I argue can be harmonized with efforts to increase agricultural sustainability. Impacts on land and soil Covering only about one-third of the earth’s surface, land is indispensable to agriculture and livestock production. These land resources, according to a definition by UNEP (2002) include soil, land cover, and landscapes. Land and soil provide a range of additional benefits, including regulating hydrological cycles and aiding in the preservation of biodiversity, carbon storage, and other ecosystem services (the resources and process provided by natural systems that are beneficial to human livelihoods and well-being). Though finite, the functional amounts of land and soil resources, along with water and nutrients, are, as Smil (2000) asserts, variable with management practices that considerably affect their quality and efficiency of use. Many current agricultural practices reduce the ability of ecosystems to provide goods and services such as carbon sequestration and soil retention and absorption of water. The amount of land under agricultural cultivation has increased steadily in developing regions while remaining largely constant in developed regions, with the largest gains in cultivable land made in the mid-twentieth century (UNEP 2008). Degradation and pollution of land resources, such as the overuse of fertilizers and other chemicals, has also occurred as a result of policy failures and unsustainable agricultural practices (UNEP 2002)...
eBook - ePubDirty Words
Writings on the History and Culture of Pollution
- Hannah Bradby(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...CHAPTER FIVE AGRICULTURAL POLLUTION: THE PRICE OF PROGRESS? JANET ROWE EARLY DAYS: A NECESSARY BALANCE WITH NATURE Since neolithic times, people and their agricultural activities have had a profound effect upon the environment of what is now the UK. As the hunter-gatherers gave way to herders and cultivators, the land surface was progressively cleared of the wildwood. The earliest revolution in land-use came with the discovery that if land was fallowed, or rested for a season or more, it could be kept in cultivation. This allowed settlement, and increases in population. Drier and more accessible areas came first into agriculture. Soils in some of these situations were thin and prone to erosion, for example over the chalk, or in sandy areas, or where underlain by impermeable rocks. If cultivation occurred, it was relatively short-lived, and re-colonization by bushes and trees was only patchy. Animals could be extensively grazed, however, often with the associated use of more fertile pastures. It is largely this management which has given us the downlands, heathlands and moorlands of today. On heavier, more fertile land, a pattern of open fields, usually strip-farmed, meadows and commons, copses and woodlands developed, all useful and managed for products of different kinds. Such mixed farming and extensive management has given us our ancient woodlands, hedgerows and lowland meadows. Enclosure in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as population increased and there were greater profits to be made from more advanced stock-rearing and cropping methods, changed the patterns and gave us more hedgerows and walls; but rotation and inter-relationship between the different facets of land management were still essential...
eBook - ePub- Elizabeth R. DeSombre(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...Some people use it to refer to nature and the various amenities that nature provides: plants, animals, soils, air, water, even sunlight. But the concept is broader than that and changes as we imagine different human activities and learn more about global systems, from the smallest to the largest scale. We now understand the importance of microbes and of the stratospheric ozone layer in protecting life on earth. At the same time, human constructs such as buildings and cities, or practices such as agriculture or industrialization, form part of what we are thinking of when we talk about the environment. What we are generally discussing when we look at the environment is how human activity influences it, and is influenced by it. One useful framing is to think of the environment in this context as being partly about pollution, which occurs when contaminants or other unwanted substances are introduced (usually unintentionally) into air, water, or land as a byproduct of other activity. It is also partly about the use of resources, things taken out of their environmental context for human use. These resources may be renewable or non-renewable. Pollution is pervasive. It includes everything from waste dumped intentionally into the ocean to fumes from factory smokestacks to agricultural runoff into rivers. We can even speak of light pollution or noise pollution to refer to unwanted intrusions into our surroundings that affect the wellbeing of people or other species. Some pollution is obvious. We can see or smell it. We may know its causes and be able to feel its effects. Other types of pollution, however, are less apparent. Water that is contaminated by lead or other heavy metals may be toxic to people and animals, but it may look or taste no different than clean water. Greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide and other emissions that contribute to global climate change – are substances that, on their own, aren’t necessarily harmful to breathe...
eBook - ePubEssential Soil Science
A Clear and Concise Introduction to Soil Science
- Mark Ashman, Geeta Puri(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...Nutrients can be supplied using fertilizer. Fertilizer must be applied in a way that provides maximum economic returns for the farmer but which does not cause pollution to the wider environment. Fertilizer trials are used to determine when is the best time to apply fertilizer and at what application rate. Early farmers had to rely on biological factors to restore the fertility of the soil. Slash-and-burn agriculture is one of the first examples of how man has sought to manage the environment. Increasing population pressures have led to shorter regeneration periods and declining fertilities. In response to these problems farmers have developed ways of alternating their farming practices by using crop rotations. Crop rotations manage the fertility of the soil without the need for long fallow periods. Organic manure can also form a useful soil amendment by supplying nutrients and improving the physical condition of the soil. Like fertilizers, they need to be applied at the right time and in the right quantities in order to prevent pollution. For the most part, the history of soil science has been closely linked with agricultural developments. Now there is a whole set of new challenges in the form of soil pollution. Soil contamination, remediation and erosion are the topics of our final chapter....
