The Pros and Cons of Industrial Agriculture
- It increases food production. Large-scale industrial farms have an advantage over traditional farms when it comes to producing food fast and in larger amounts. ...
- It lowers consumer costs. Industrial farms are also helpful in reducing food costs and making food more accessible, even for consumers who have lower incomes. ...
- It encourages technological development and innovation. These farms rely heavily on modern tools and technology, which means scientists and engineers need to continue to find ways to improve equipment ...
- It creates employment opportunities. While industrial agriculture depends on machinery, that doesn’t mean human work isn’t necessary. ...
- It lengthens food availability.
- Increased Food Production.
- Increased Employment Opportunities.
- Faster Market Readiness.
- Lower Consumer Costs.
- Innovation.
- Broadened Palates and Balanced Diets.
- High Worker Efficiency.
- Flexible Locations.
What are the pros and cons of industrial agriculture?
What Are the Pros of Factory Farming?
- It keeps prices down for consumers. Factory farming allows for livestock products to be produce on a large economic scale. ...
- It allows automation to help provide food resources. In the past, farming meant an intense amount of daily manual labor to produce a crop. ...
- It improves production efficiencies. ...
What are the advantages of industrial agriculture?
Pros of Using Industrial Agriculture
- Industrial agriculture comes with a lot of benefits which are listed below.
- It increases agricultural production in lesser time.
- It makes life easier by bringing down the cost of agricultural produce.
- It boosts the economy.
- It creates employment opportunities for the skilled and unskilled.
What are the negative effects of industrial agriculture?
Industrial farming is bad for the health of workers, eaters, and downstream neighbors. Here are some of its costly health impacts: Pesticide toxicity. Herbicides and insecticides commonly used in agriculture have been associated with both acute poisoning and long-term chronic illness. Water pollution from fertilizer runoff contaminates ...
What are the 10 benefits of Agriculture?
The Agricultural Benefits of Weather Stations for Eco-Friendly Farmers
- Following Weather Patterns is Crucial for Eco-Friendly Farmers. Weather is something we all care about. ...
- The Importance of Weather Forecast for Farmers. ...
- The Main Benefits of Weather Stations for Farming. ...
- 1. ...
- 2. ...
- Final Thoughts. ...
What are 3 benefits of industrial agriculture?
The Pros and Cons of Industrial AgricultureIt increases food production. ... It lowers consumer costs. ... It encourages technological development and innovation. ... It creates employment opportunities. ... It lengthens food availability.
What is the impact of industrial agriculture?
Industrial agriculture pollutes the air, water, and soil with toxic agrochemicals and livestock manure. It is a major source of pollution, accounting for more than twenty-percent of total greenhouse gas emissions � even more than transportation.
What are 5 benefits of agriculture?
10 Reasons Why Agriculture Is Important#1. It's the main source of raw materials. ... #2. It's important to international trade. ... #3. It plays a big role in a nation's revenue. ... #4. It provides employment. ... #5. It's crucial to a country's development. ... #6. It can help heal the environment. ... #7. It goes hand-in-hand with war. ... #8.More items...
What are the main benefits of agriculture?
Agriculture and Food. Agriculture can help reduce poverty, raise incomes and improve food security for 80% of the world's poor, who live in rural areas and work mainly in farming. The World Bank Group is a leading financier of agriculture.
What are characteristics of industrial agriculture?
Industrial agriculture is the large-scale, intensive production of crops and animals, often involving chemical fertilizers on crops or the routine, harmful use of antibiotics in animals (as a way to compensate for filthy conditions, even when the animals are not sick).
What is an example of industrial agriculture?
GMOs are widespread within industrial field agriculture, including over 90% of US corn, cotton, and soybeans. GMO animals include certain salmon and pigs, with more species in development. The long-term consequences of GMOs for human and ecosystem health are still unknown.
What are the benefits and advantages of agriculture?
Farming creates opportunities to lift people out of poverty in developing nations. Over 60 percent of the world's working poor works in agriculture. Farming creates more jobs, beginning with farmers, and continuing with farm equipment makers, food processing plants, transportation, infrastructure and manufacturing.
What are the benefits of agriculture in our daily lives?
Agriculture provides most of the world's food and fabrics. Cotton, wool, and leather are all agricultural products. Agriculture also provides wood for construction and paper products. These products, as well as the agricultural methods used, may vary from one part of the world to another.
What does industrial agriculture rely on?
Industrial agriculture and food systems are largely dependent on fossil fuels for the production of food by way of machinery and mechanization, agrichemicals, transportation, food processing, food packaging, assimilating waste, etc.
How does industrial farming impact local communities?
It affects air quality for two different sets of people in factory farm communities: Community members who live close to the farms, and community members who work in them. For both of those groups, industrial farming facilities produce more than 400 different gases, all as a result of the amount of manure they produce.
What are the benefits of urban agriculture?
Through urban farm programs that educate and inform, many people will get involved and be more aware of how local food systems and processes are made and distributed. As a result, alternatives to food sources are created and access to fresh food is made easier.
Why is industrial agriculture important?
The crops grown using industrial agriculture is meant to feed the masses and ensure food security across the world. The use of chemicals, mechanized tools, and other advanced technology are some of the reasons why industrial agriculture is able to produce massive quantities of food from farms.
What is industrial agriculture?
In this type of agriculture, the focus is mainly on maximizing the yield of fewer types of crops for more sales and greater profits, instead of diversification of the crops. The crops grown using industrial agriculture is meant to feed the masses and ensure food security across the world.
Why are large industrial farms better suited than traditional small to medium farms?
Large industrial farms are better suited than traditional small to medium farms for mechanized agriculture practices, which directly results in higher yields of crops, which has been the basic driving purpose of the industrialization efforts since the 1950s, to ensure food security of a rapidly growing global population.
Why are modern farms so dependent on technology?
This means that there is always a need for better and more efficient technology in these farms, which in turn creates higher demand from scientists and engineers to innovate, thus keeping the benchmark of development and innovation high at all times.
What are the benefits of industrial agriculture?
Benefits Of Industrial Agriculture. The main advantage of intensive farming is its increased performance when higher yields are harvested from smaller territories. This brings economic benefits to landowners and provides food for the growing population. Intensive agriculture fully satisfies the market demand even in densely inhabited areas.
How does industrial agriculture affect animals?
Apart from the expansion of new territories when wildlife loses its natural habitation areas, animals are greatly affected by chemical applications in industrial agriculture. While herbicides pollute natural resources, pesticides are rarely selective and kill beneficial species as well, like pollinators and soil-dwelling microorganisms contributing to its fertility. Recent researches report decreased farmland bird and bee populations due to heavy insecticides in industrial agriculture, being a significant threat to further farming business and ecology in general. Hormones mitigating plant diseases are another harmful issue of intensive farming.
How does intensive farming affect the environment?
Intensive farming causes environment pollution and induces major health issues due to poisonous agents. In this regard, the impacts of industrial agriculture require serious attention and management of risks.
What are the effects of monocropping?
Monocropping of high-yield species like rice, soybeans, corn, or wheat provokes high pest establishment and soil depletion. Particular pests attack particular crops; intercropped cultures act as barriers since they are non-host plants. Furthermore, reduced diversity of crops due to this fundamental industrial agriculture practice means better pest establishment and development of their resistance to controls applied. This results in extreme use of chemicals (often critical to humans and nature) and stronger option introductions.
What is intensive farming?
Intensive agriculture is the most typical method of soil cultivation and the key source of food worldwide. 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.
Why are bees and birds declining in agriculture?
Recent researches report decreased farmland bird and bee populations due to heavy insecticides in industrial agriculture , being a significant threat to further farming business and ecology in general. Hormones mitigating plant diseases are another harmful issue of intensive farming.
What does reduced diversity of crops mean?
Furthermore, reduced diversity of crops due to this fundamental industrial agriculture practice means better pest establishment and development of their resistance to controls applied. This results in extreme use of chemicals (often critical to humans and nature) and stronger option introductions.
What is industrial agriculture?
Industrial Agriculture is a large-scale commercial enterprise centered around agricultural goods and services. Or lots and lots…and lots of cows and chickens (for our town mice). The New World Encyclopedia probably explains it best.
What are the health risks of industrial agriculture?
Chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease as well as conditions such as obesity and hormone imbalance have all been highlighted to be the effects of consuming products that were grown by large-scale agricultural enterprises.
How does intensive irrigation affect the environment?
Intensive irrigation can lower groundwater levels and potentially jeopardize rainfall levels in the future, effectively leading to climate change. The heavy use of chemicals also leads to pollution of nearby water bodies. Rivers and lakes are often most at risk.
What are the environmental concerns of farming?
When it comes to criticisms against intensive commercial farming, environmental concerns are the fiercest barrage that titans of the industry are forced to dodge or absorb. From river pollution to carbon dioxide and methane emissions. From soil erosion to lowered water tables.
What are the fields of study that are unrelated to farming?
Even fields of study that are unrelated to farming (Information Technology, Accounting, etc) are feeding commercial farming’s almost insatiable demand for workers. Some large farms even spawn small towns and villages that birth entrepreneurs and other businesses that serve the farms’ spheres of influence.
How has technology improved agriculture?
Scientific advancements and technological innovations have facilitated the ability to maximize yields , grow crops in and out of their natural seasons, as well as carry out real-time data collection and analysis for rapid adjustment of environments. These are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the capabilities in modern agriculture. The result has been a boom in food production levels that would have been unthinkable just a few centuries ago.
What is farming base?
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What Is Industrial Agriculture?
The concept of industrial agriculture implies increased use of farmlands to produce the highest yields possible to gain profit and support human food needs.
Benefits Of Industrial Agriculture
The main advantage of intensive farming is its increased performance when higher yields are harvested from smaller territories. This brings economic benefits to landowners and provides food for the growing population. Intensive agriculture fully satisfies the market demand even in densely inhabited areas.
Disadvantages Of Industrial Agriculture
The highest crops come with some drawbacks though. Traditional intensive agriculture neither aligns with the sustainability concept nor contributes to nature protection, so intensive farming problems require serious consideration.
EOS Crop Monitoring
Performing fields analytics based on relevant satellite data to ensure effective decision-making!
How Does Intensive Farming Reduce Biodiversity?
Industrial agriculture is certainly useful in terms of food security. However, its methods are far from beneficial to the environment. Shortened flora and fauna populations represent a significant disadvantage. It mainly happens due to agrochemical applications and monocropping practices.
Technologies In Intensive Agriculture
Innovations greatly facilitate agriculturalists’ efforts and save farmers’ costs. Precision farming is extremely helpful in industrial agriculture and is part of the business-as-usual practices of many enterprises nowadays.
Crop Monitoring To Help In Intensive Farming
Industrial agriculture implies heavy exploitation of land aiming to ensure sufficient food supplies. With all respect to nature, humankind cannot reject this practice completely. However, mitigation of risks and negative consequences is possible with smart solutions and precision agriculture, in particular.
Why is industrial farming important?
Industrial farming is a way to “keep pace with a rapidly growing global production”.
How can locavores help the economy?
If a community were to implement the locavore movement, it would better the economy and enhance the nutrition and health. Bringing the locavore movement into a community can bring along with it a better economic situation. Instead of going to the nearest Walmart where your “money leaves the community at every transaction”, spending your money at local farmers markets will allow for the profits to be kept inside the of the community (Source A). Allowing more profits to be flooded into a community will benefit small farms, creating more local jobs which will enable the economy to grow and prosper. According to the
Why did Henry B. make steel more efficient?
Henry B. also made steel more efficient. The more profitable steel helped enough to make them replenish the train tracks, so the new transportation brought together many cities . Since the North had manufacturing,
How can we reduce the impact of industrial agriculture?
Cutting animal products out of your diet is the best way you can help reduce the impacts of industrial agriculture. Not only are animals themselves harmed by the process of industrial farming, but it is incredibly resource-intensive to raise animals and keep them alive, requiring huge amounts of water and feed.
How does industrial agriculture affect the environment?
Industrial agriculture produces numerous negative environmental impacts. Pasture land for grazing cattle and other domesticated animals is destroying ecosystems. Thousands of acres in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, home to numerous Indigenous nations and referred to as the lungs of the planet, are being burned and cleared to make way for cows to produce meat—much of which is destined for American markets.
What are the major crops in the United States?
Wheat, corn, and soy are major crops in the United States. Monocropping is highly unnatural and depletes the soil at unsustainable rates, leading to heavy application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which cause problems of their own.
What is the most obvious characteristic of industrial agriculture?
Abuse is perhaps the defining characteristic of industrial agriculture and is present at all levels of these operations. Animal abuse is one of the most obvious, despite being hidden behind picturesque marketing materials and “humane” labels, which are doled out liberally and use woefully insufficient guidelines.
What is industrial agriculture?
Beginning in the early 1900s and coinciding with the Industrial Revolution, industrial agriculture is the practice of intensive farming of animals and crops. It is characterized by large-scale monoculture, high levels of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs.
Why do people stick to plants?
Sticking to plants is a way to cut resource use by a significant degree, and help take money out of the pockets of corrupt industrial leaders. Industrial agriculture may be winning battles across the board, but people are waking up to the harmful impacts this industry is causing.
Is water pollution from agriculture point source?
Water pollution from industrial agriculture is known as point-source pollution, meaning it comes from a single source. Only large-scale agricultural operations, as opposed to smaller-scale farms, produce enough pollution to be considered point-source. Examples of industrial agricultural water pollution can come in the form ...
What is industrial agriculture?
Industrial agriculture is the large-scale, intensive production of crops and animals, often involving chemical fertilizers on crops or the routine , harmful use of antibiotics in animals (as a way to compensate for filthy conditions, even when the animals are not sick). It may also involve crops that are genetically modified, ...
How does crop farming affect the environment?
There is soil depletion and soil infertility related to monoculture, soil erosion, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, increased greenhouse gas emissions (particularly methane and nitrous oxide) from cow digestion and manure as well as nitrogen-based fertilizers, and pesticide overuse leading to potential pesticide toxicity (especially in farmworkers). Studies show that employees of CAFOs are at risk from potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria; workers can also bring these bacteria home. Farmworkers and local communities can also be exposed to hazardous fumes wafting from unlined, uncovered pits of animal waste and other sources. And despite the fact that CAFOs often must meet permitting requirements and are regulated by both state and federal agencies, NRDC has discovered a worrying lack of transparency. Discrepancies between data collected by states and the EPA suggest the EPA is unaware of the size, number, and location of CAFOs across the country and what those operations are doing to control pollution. And that’s just for starters. Here are some areas of particular concern.
Why is monoculture bad for the soil?
Monoculture also renders the soil prone to rapid erosion, since the practice leaves the soil bare outside of the crop’s growing season. Perhaps more problematically, repeatedly planting the same crop invites pests that prey on a certain plant to wait around the same spot for their favorite food to return.
Why do industrial farms use antibiotics?
Industrial farms overuse antibiotics, feeding large amounts of the drugs—often the same ones used to treat human illnesses—to healthy animals to help them survive in crowded, dirty CAFOs. Low-level exposure to antibiotics creates the perfect breeding ground for superbugs, those pathogens that antibiotics can’t kill.
How long has agriculture been around?
Human agriculture has existed for about 12,000 years, and industrial farming is less than a century old. But the latter has become so prevalent that sustainable farming practices are now sometimes branded “alternative.”
What did ancient farmers plant?
Ancient farmers planted seeds from only the sweetest fruits, generation after generation, ensuring that any genetic variations that increased sweetness survived. By selecting plants with increasingly white, increasingly tiny, flowers, farmers turned a weedy little herb into cauliflower. It was slow but effective.
What is a factory farm?
The term “factory farm” is commonly used to refer to large, industrialized facilities raising animals for food, but it isn’t a legal or scientific term. The official name for these facilities is concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
WHAT IS INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE?
Industrial agriculture refers to growing plants and raising animals at large scales for the purpose of maximizing food production. To achieve this goal, farms rely on synthetic chemical inputs to boost productivity and—when possible—mechanization of manual processes.
THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE
Industrial agriculture traces its inception to the Industrial Revolution in the US. Increasing mechanization coupled with the development of synthetic fertilizers made larger-scale agriculture possible by boosting yields of crops and finetuning animal nutrition.
WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE?
Some characteristics of industrial agriculture are easy to see, while others take place less visibly. In either case, the hallmarks of industrial agriculture described below have far-reaching impacts.
WHY IS INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE PROBLEMATIC?
Industrial agricultural practices are often presented as necessary for feeding growing human populations around the world because they increase crop yields. But it is important to understand that a healthy food system is about more than producing large volumes of calories.
WHERE IS INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE MOST COMMON?
The US is the birthplace of industrial agriculture and remains the global leader in industrial farming. Despite recent consumer interest in more humane and sustainable options, one study estimates that nearly 99% of all animals raised for food in the US still come from CAFOs.
WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES TO INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE?
Sustainable agriculture has been gaining interest and traction, especially as the impacts of industrial food production are becoming ever clearer. Sustainable farming can help to preserve resources like soil and water and can enable local economies to flourish.
CONCLUSION
Industrial agriculture’s impacts will only continue to worsen without interventions to prevent high-input monocrop farming and cruel CAFOs from spreading to more locations around the world.
