Intensive Farming

9 Key excerpts on "Intensive Farming"

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  eBook - ePub

  Agricultural Ecology

  • Joy Tivy(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 14 Intensive agriculture Modern intensive agriculture is characterized above all by the use of the most sophisticated technological methods of farming. It involves high levels of capital expenditure or inputs in order to achieve as high an output per unit ofland area and/ or of livestock with the maximum efficiency possible. As well as fixed capital, and investment in land, buildings, livestock and machinery, Intensive Farming incurs large annual production costs. These include, on the one hand, those of supplying direct energy – in the form of human and/or animal labour, fossil fuels and electricity-necessary to undertake farm work; and, on the other, those of supplying indirect energy, represented by fertilizers, water, herbicides, pesticides, seeds and a wide range of other chemical products necessary to obtain high levels of crop and/or livestock production. Slesser (1975) has used energy density or the input of total energy (direct and indirect) equivalents ‘at the farm gate’ per hectare of farmland as a means of expressing relative intensity of agriculture (see Table 14.1). The expenditure on the individual inputs varies with the type of farming (Fig. 14.1). Temperate soft fruits (raspberries, strawberries etc.) are still very labour-intensive and these costs together with those for pesticides dominate the inputs in this case

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  eBook - ePub

  An Introduction to Cultural Ecology

  • Mark Q. Sutton, E. N. Anderson(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  9 Intensive Agriculture

  Intensive agriculture is a large-scale and complex system of farming and animal husbandry often involving the use of animal labor, equipment, and water diversion techniques and the production of surplus food. Intensive agriculture represents a significant shift in the scale and scope of agriculture and reflects a fundamental change in the relationship between people and the environment. The use of animals and machines to supplement human labor is significant in intensive agriculture, although there are a few intensive systems that rely solely on human labor.

  The changing scope and scale of intensive agriculture, coupled with increasing social and technical complexity, increase the range of options that humans have in adapting to the environment. Given a sufficient reservoir of potential action, some intensive agriculturalists have developed a worldview in which they are above nature and therefore less bound by nature than their less complex neighbors. This belief system may generate a feeling that nature can be, and so must be, controlled or conquered. This view is flawed, however, because all cultures are integrated with their environment and cannot escape the consequences of their actions (Flannery 1972) unless they relocate or exploit resources of distant places through trade or conquest.

  Intensive agricultural systems tend to rely on a narrower range of domestic species than horticulturalists do, with increases in both productivity and risk. They will employ components of the other subsistence strategies—hunting and gathering, horticulture, and pastoralism—but these tend to be minor components of the system. A consequence of the increased productivity of intensive agriculture is an enormous increase in human carrying capacity (assuming food is the limiting factor, following Liebig’s Law of the Minimum) and so huge increases in population. With population increase comes greater sociopolitical complexity, reduction of mobility, nucleation of settlements, and sometimes the evolution of state-level societies. While this cause-and-effect relationship among agriculture, population increase, and state development is overly simplistic, the trend is generally true.

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  eBook - ePub

  Sustainable Agricultural Chemistry in the 21st Century

  Green Chemistry Nexus

  • William Nelson, William M. Nelson(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  9 Sustainable intensive agriculture

  DOI: 10.1201/9781003157991-9

  Intensive agriculture is the most typical method of soil cultivation and the key source of food worldwide. (See Figure 9.1 ) It relies on reaping high yields with strong and often extreme land exploitation and often extreme inputs. The main benefits of Intensive Farming include sufficient food supplies at affordable prices.

  Figure 9.1

  Intensive agriculture. (See www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/valley-croatia-intensive-agriculture-1161894373 )

  The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society’s food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Practitioners of sustainable agriculture seek to integrate three main objectives into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity. Sustainability links social issues, in both the sciences and politics. Environmental, economic, and scientific dimensions are actively being pursued. The consideration of the social dimension in agriculture is still rather uncommon.[1 ] Global sustainability is increasingly understood as a prerequisite to attain and maintain human development at all scales, from local farming communities to cities, nations, and the world.[2 ,3 ]

  A simple definition of sustainable agriculture suggested by UNESCO is “production practices and systems which are environmentally sound and economically and socially viable.” Therefore, “corresponding agricultural cropping systems and management practices would aim at high product quality standards and have an intergenerational time horizon.”[4 ] In this chapter we will merge this with intensive agriculture to form Sustainable Intensive Agriculture (SIA).

  9.1 Background

  Given the prevalence of Intensive Agriculture (IA) and the current global situation, a paradigm shift towards Sustainable Intensive Agriculture (SIA) is needed. It must integrate the dual and interdependent goals of using sustainable practices to meet rising human needs while contributing to resilience and sustainability across scales. Both are required to sustain the future viability of agriculture. This paradigm shift could move agriculture from its current role as the world’s single largest driver of global environmental change, to becoming a critical component of a transition to agricultural sustainability that can operate within the biophysical safe operating space on Earth.

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  Agroecology, sustainable and secure food systems

  • Saket Kushwaha(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  4.1 INTRODUCTION The measure of technical efficiency relates to the output of the farms with the farm inputs employed. It concerns itself the amount of agricultural production per unit factor input. A farm is said to have a technically efficient system of agricultural production when it ensures the maximum possible production while utilizing the least amount of the factors of production i.e. labor, capital, land and entrepreneurship. The amount of agricultural production either increases while the amount of farm inputs remains constant or the amount of agricultural production is not altered with the removal of some inputs. An increase in a farm’s technical efficiency reflects an increase in the productivity of the various factors of production. During the first wave of globalization , for instance, technological inventions like the cotton gin, steel plows and combined harvesters enhanced the technical efficiency of the agricultural systems. With mechanization in the field of agriculture, a few workers in the farms could produce enough for the whole population, leaving most of the labor force to concentrate on industries. The technological advancements in the field of agriculture not only revolutionized agriculture but also catalyzed the industrial revolution. Agricultural intensification refers to the process by which the technical efficiency of the farms is enhanced. Agricultural intensification is the increment of agricultural production per unit factor input (The ethics of sustainable agricultural intensification). Agricultural intensification is said to have occurred in the event that outputs of a given land have increased without a corresponding increase in the amount of the factors of production. It reflects an increase in the productivity of the various factors of production i.e.

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  eBook - ePub

  Human Adaptive Strategies

  An Ecological Introduction to Anthropology

  • Daniel Bates, Judith Tucker, Ludomir Lozny(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  So, even as intensive agriculture solves some problems, it creates new ones. Irrigation has left such concentrations of minerals in the soil of California’s Imperial Valley that productivity is leveling off and threatens to decline, and there is virtually no way to divert the contaminated water from the fields away from the downstream communities (see Chapter 7). Irrigation is often associated with environmental problems of this sort. Paradoxically, one response is to intensify production further by expanding the area under irrigation, building larger dams, digging deeper wells, using expensive chemicals to remove the salt, and using more water. Again, such efforts may solve the problem in the short run only to create more serious problems in the long run, such as causing the water table in the area to drop or further increasing soil salinity. Consequently, cultivators must work harder merely to maintain the same level of productivity.

  With the development of intensive agriculture, the difference in productivity between richer and poorer lands was multiplied, giving rise to, and amplifying regional disparities. Similar processes of regional or national differentiation continued as societies industrialized, with more extensive effects. Today, we can still see this in economic disparities occurring on a global level, as regions with access to cheap energy and sources of capital, labor, and appropriate raw materials develop rapidly, while adjacent areas suddenly appear underdeveloped by comparison. Within countries, the people who control land and capital can reap far greater rewards than those who have only their labor to sell; hence, great social and economic disparities are apparent.

  The Rural Consequences of Intensive Agriculture

  The social consequences of intensive agriculture have been at least as far-reaching as its ecological consequences. In pre- or less-industrialized nations, the relationship of the Intensive Farming community to the general society is most striking. In such societies, smallholding farmers or farm laborers historically tended to have little voice in the urban-dominated national social and economic system. They lacked control over the means of their production—the land, the capital, and other resources they need to grow their crops—and even the labor they contribute to the process is undervalued. These farmers are traditionally termed “peasants,” although the term might be questionable where rural society is itself rapidly changing as in India, much of South America, and China today.1

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  eBook - ePub

  The Living Land

  Agriculture, Food and Community Regeneration in the 21st Century

  • Jules Pretty Obe(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  A wide range of more sustainable forms of agriculture are now emerging and spreading in Europe and North America. Some are making substantial contributions to natural capital. But there are important misconceptions about sustainable and regenerative agriculture. The most common characterisation is that sustainable agriculture represents a return to some form of low-technology, backward or traditional agricultural practice. This is manifestly untrue. Sustainable agriculture incorporates recent innovations that may originate with scientists, with farmers, or both. It is also commonly stated that any farming using low or lower amounts of external inputs can only produce low levels of output. This is untrue for two reasons. Firstly, many sustainable agriculture farmers show that their crop yields can be better than or equal to those of their more conventional neighbours. Most show that their costs can be reduced. In developing countries, this offers new opportunities for economic growth for communities that do not have access to, or cannot afford, external resources. Secondly, sustainable agriculture produces more than just food — it significantly contributes to natural and social capital, both of which are sometimes difficult to measure and cost.

  Despite recent changes to modern agriculture, there are still millions of hectares of land farmed in environmentally sensitive and low-intensive ways throughout Europe. Their extent dwarfs recent transitions to sustainably intensified agriculture. Organic farming is one form of sustainable agriculture in which maximum reliance is put on self-regulating agro-ecosystems, locally or farm-derived renewable resources, and the management of ecological and biological processes. In Europe, there have been dramatic increases in organic agriculture in recent years. The extent increased tenfold to 1.2 million hectares in 1996. Nearly 50,000 farmers are now engaged in certified organic farming. In the UK, there were about 820 organic farms in 1997, with an area of 47,900 hectares.

  Integrated farming systems have emerged as another type of more environmentally friendly approach to farming. Once again, the emphasis is on incorporating a higher input of management and information. Integrated farming in its various guises represents a step or several steps towards sustainability. It is difficult to generalise about what happens to outputs. It used to be thought that more sustainable agriculture, whether organic or integrated, would mean reductions in crop and livestock yields. However, this generalisation no longer stands. It appears that farmers can make some cuts in input use (at least 10 to 20 per cent) without negatively affecting gross margins. By adopting better targeting and precision methods, there is less wastage and therefore the environment benefits. Yields may fall initially but will rise over time. They can then make greater cuts in input use (20 to 50 per cent) once they substitute some regenerative technologies for external inputs, such as legumes for inorganic fertilisers or predators for pesticides. Sustainable agriculture farmers get better over time.

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  Soil Management of Smallholder Agriculture

  • Rattan Lal, B.A. Stewart, Rattan Lal, B.A. Stewart(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  No-till agriculture together with other associated management practices, such as direct seeding into loose crop residues to provide soil cover and to conserve soil mois-ture, judicious choice of crop rotations, and agroforestry tree species, constitute CA. Frameworks such as CA, “ecological intensification” (Cassman 1999), and “evergreen revolution” (Swaminathan 2000) share a view of cropping systems as agroecosystems designed to make maximum use of fixed resources (land, light, temperature, etc.) along with optimum use of agri-inputs for attaining sustainable production levels. These systems tap the traditional knowledge of the farmers and add new information relevant to the specific ecologies for the intensification process (Matson et al. 1997). With limited scope for further expansion of the area under agriculture, decreas-ing factor productivity, quantum jump in production can only be achieved through agriculture intensification. Can CA lead to agriculture intensification? Agricultural intensification can be accomplished through (i) increasing yields per hectare (e.g., timely planting and with increased inputs such as water and fertilizer nutrients), (ii) increasing cropping intensity per unit of land (e.g., use of short-season crop culti-vars, relay and mixed cropping, and growing an additional crop), and (iii) changing land use from low-value crops or commodities to those that receive higher market prices. Sustainable agricultural intensification is defined as producing more output 122 Soil Management of Smallholder Agriculture from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts and at the same time increasing contributions to natural capital and the flow of envi-ronmental services (Pretty 2008; Royal Society 2009; Conway and Waage 2010; Godfray et al. 2010).

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  Key Notes on Agronomy

  • Patil, J.V.(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Daya Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  This term involves no restrictions on area of application and divergence of flow in the soil. Integrated farming system Integration of various agricultural enterprises, viz ., cropping, animal husbandry, fishery, forestry etc. A judicious mix of anyone or more with cropping complements the cropping enterprise. Integrated fertility management Technologies for management of fertilizing the crops with the objective to produce optimum crop yields with minimum fertilizer inputs taking into consideration ecological and socio-economic resources available for supply to the crop under a given agro-ecosystem, without deteriorating the soil fertility, such as application of organic manures, green manures, blue-green algae and bio-fertilizers along with use of inorganic fertilizers for higher, yields and improving the soil productivity. Integrated pest control In this method a variety of technologies in a single pest management is used with the objective to produce optimum crop yield at a minimum cost taking into consideration ecological and socio-economic constraints under a given agro-ecosystem. Integrated pest management It is a broad ecological approach that minimises pest population below economic threshold level by employing all available pest control technique like mechanical, biological, chemical and crop management practices in compatible manners. This ebook is exclusively for this university only. Cannot be resold/distributed. Integrated weed management Application of many kinds of weed management technology in a mutually supportive manner. A weed management system that uses all suitable control methods in a compatible manner, to reduce weed population and maintain them at levels below those causing economic injury. Intensive cropping Maximum use of the land by means of frequent succession of harvested crops. Inter flow It is the lateral seepage of water in a relatively pervious soil above a less pervious layer.

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  Conservation of Biodiversity and Natural Resources

  • Singh, M P, Soma Dey(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Daya Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  To facilitate mechanization, fanners generally tend to increase the dimension of their fields, by eliminating patchworks and edges, despite the fact that those landscape patterns and elements are known to be important in the maintenance of beneficial insect species for pest control and conservation of biodiversity in general. Thus, the use of machine power to increase labour productivity will drive technological development in agriculture further toward the exploitation of comparative advantages and economies of scale (e.g. enlargement of farms). The building of specialized technical infrastructures in the area will reinforce the trend of product specialization and generate a mode-locking effect. While increasing yields per hectare without enlarging the land area This ebook is exclusively for this university only. Cannot be resold/distributed. managed per unit of labour can be a (temporary) solution to match an increasing demographic pressure, it has limited power to meet the demand for a higher labour productivity. The problems with this solution are evident in PR China, where massive fertilization and irrigation are practiced to augment yields coupled to labour-Intensive Farming techniques. Although in this way agriculture will feed a densely-population country, it will provide little support for its socio-economic development. The equation of labour productivity indicates that both an increase in land productivity and an increase in land managed per hour of labour can have a positive marginal return in terms of an increased labour productivity and economic return.

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