ENVS 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Monocropping, Overgrazing, Sustainable Agriculture
1 May 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
How sustainable agriculture can address the environmental and human health. Industrial agriculture consumes fossil fuel, water, topsoil at unsustainable rates. One of the leading causes of air and water pollution, soil depletion and diminishing biodiversity. Meat production contributes disproportionately to these problems; feeding grain to livestock to produce meat as opposed to directly feeding humans: lots of energy loss. Farm as a factory: it has inputs (pesticides, feed, fertilizer, and fuel) and produces outputs (corn, chicken) Goal is to increase the yield and decrease costs of production: want to exploit economies of scale. Synthetic pesticides: pollute the soil, water and air. Soil erosion: happening at a faster rate than the soil can be replenished. Water is being consumed at an unsustainable rate. Animals contain an excessive amount of saturated fat; this is linked to many chronic degenerative diseases: these agricultural practices are considered unsustainable, consumption of some renewable resources is occurring faster than rate of regeneration.
