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In my English 130 class we watched the movie Inconvenient Truth and, for the first time, I saw the growing industrialization of China. After seeing China’s growing wasteful consumption of resources, I was reminded of a discussion that took place in my Anthropology 113 class last semester. In this discussion, my professor brought to light how our production of food is just as disturbing as our consumption of it. He presented a video that showed how the industrialization of certain areas led the farmers to abandon their tradition agricultural system and replace it with mass food production. This “small” change ended up having a huge negative impact on their society. Previous to change in their farming techniques, the farming system allowed for more social interaction between the generations and gave them enough food to feed themselves with still plenty left to generate in income. After the push for mass production, this system was destroyed, leaving the town with problems they had no precedent for. These events show how a change in production of goods (especially crops) can have disastrous effects on people and their environment. For my research I set my heart on further exploring this relationship between human’s participation in agriculture and its affects on the environment. Hence, I began my research trying to figure out what it is that people are doing to leave the world with fewer agriculturally usable lands.
After reading a hand full of books, I found myself with even more unanswered questions and lots of contradictory information. Some books, like One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future, say that the unbelievable growth in population and the population’s consumption is at fault rather tha...
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...in, Jon. “2.6 OBSTACLES TO BETTER LAND MANAGEMENT.” Better LandHusbandry: From Soil Conservation to Holistic Land Management. Enfield: SCIENCE PUBLISHERS, 2006. 62-72.
Laegreid, Marit O.C. Bøckman and O. Kaarstad. “4.3 Soil degradation.” Agriculture, Fertilizers and the Environment. New York: CABI Publishing, 1999. 104-113.
Lappè, Frances M. “Diet for a Small Planet” Composing a Civic Life: A Rhetoric and Readings for Inquiry and Action. New York: Pearson Education, Inc.,2007.
McMichael, Anthony J. “Introduction: techniques and issues” Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human species. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 212-214.
Raman, Saroja. “Ch 7: Land Management for Sustainable Agriculture” Agricultural Sustainability: Principles, Processes, and Prospects. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc. 2006. 93-140.
McDonald, M., & Brown, K. (2000). Soil and water conservation projects and rural livelihoods: options for design and research to enhance adoption adaptation. Land Degradation and Development, Vol. 11 Number 4
At Goshen College, a small liberal arts college, Land Management is one of the courses required for Environmental Studies majors. The main book required for this class is Holistic Management by Allan Savory. Savory is a well-known ecologist and author. His books cover his theories on how to take care of land. His work is so well recognized that he is known as the founder of holistic management principles. The teacher of this Land Management, Bill Minter, draws most of his lectures from the information in this book. One might make the assumption that the information in a book approved for a class such as this would not contain controversial material. Both the teacher and the students in the class assumed just this, the material within the book had subsequent evidence to back up the theories. However, this is not the case. Allen Savory’s holistic management ideas on grazing and resting the land do not work in the basic ways that he claims they do. In fact, research has been done that disputes his theories. Therefore, it has been given a great deal of criticism by other scientist.
Those agriculturists that think the problems of food production can be solved through technology fail to see the importance of the hard work it takes to make the food. This hard work reinforces the cultural times among farmers and their families. “A culture is not a collection of relics or ornaments, but a practical necessity, and its corruption invokes calamity. A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, and work, conviviality, reverence, and aspiration” (43). It reveals the needs of human as well as their limits; a healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity and can grow only among a people soundly established upon the land. It supports and protects a person’s knowledge of the earth. We cannot allow another generation to forget the importance of this culture. If we do, the knowledge that is held will be lost
Agriculture has been around for hundreds of years. With its negative effects on humanity, agriculture has greatly affected the environment. Many archeologists believe that adoption of Agriculture was not an improvement but a disaster for humans in many ways. Jared Diamond, the author of the article called “The worst mistake in the history of the human race” argues that hunter-gatherers were better off than the farmers. In a way agriculture is believed to cause many problems for humans such as sexual inequality, deep class division, changed their diet which later led to poor health and diseases.
Traditional agriculture requires massive forest and grassland removal to obtain land necessary to farm on. Deforestation and overgrazing has caused erosion flooding, and enabled the expansion of deserts. But with drainage systems, leveling, and irrigation provided by the Green Rev, all this terra deforming will unlikely happen again. We can retain clean air and lessen the global warming effect caused by deforestation.Many people argue that a revamp in agriculture will be way too expensive and unrealistic especially for those poor farmers in third world countries. However many times, they exaggerate the price.
She attended Earlham College in Indiana. Shortly after college she began finding her passion and doing the research that would lead to her becoming a key thinker in sustainable development. Lappe broke ground with her first book Diet for a Small Planet in 1971. It is in this book that her point of view began to emerge. Lappe argues that ineffective food policies and human practices have led to world hunger (Shetterly, “Frances Moore Lappe”).
“Sustainable agriculture involves food production methods that are healthy, do not harm the environment, respect workers, are humane to animals, provide fair wages to farmers, and support farming communities” (Table, 2009). Local farming methods do not always use sustainable methods. Researching about the methods local farmers use is important in the decision to buy locally.
As the world population grows at an astonishing rate, our mother earth is getting very crowded. Our natural resources are being overused and the land available for life is getting smaller and smaller. Farmers have to find ways to make what land they have usable and profitable. Farmers in general are a shrinking population. How does this relate to the general public? Without farmers we would not have food, without food we will all die. The world is realizing this problem and the best way to solve it is to find more land for habitat. We can not tack on a few million acres to earth and start using that, so we have to find somewhere else to go.
1998-1999 World Resources: A Guide to the Global Environment. Environmental Change and Human Health. A Joint Publication by the World Resources Institute, the World Bank, the United Nations Environmental Programme, and the United Nations Development Programme. Oxford University Press, New York, NY 1998.
The changing aspects of land use and land cover especially cropping pattern is affected through bio-physical, socio-economic and ecological drivers. Land use and land cover analysis is an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the different problems that can be identified through scientific and cultural study and it is more decisive for qualitative and quantitative evaluation. land use of an area depends upon soil, climate, hydrological characteristics and prevailing socio-economic conditions. The man-land relationship is well developed in the rural environment where cultivation forms the primary occupation of the people. This research paper mainly focuses on socio economic drivers that play a major role in transforming current land
Jacques-Yves Cousteau once said, “Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today” (“Population,” Internet). With the current statistics, Jacques could not be more accurate. Every second, 4.2 people are born and 1.8 people die, which would be a net gain of 2.4 people per second (“Population,” Internet). At this steady rate, the environmental health is spiraling downwards, and it is safe to assume humans are responsible for this. As the population increases, harmful effects on the land, water, and air also do.
Agriculture also leads to soil erosion, both through rainfall and wind. This soil can damage the aquatic ecosystems it ends up in, an...
Soil is a standout amongst the most vital layers of earth which is required for the continuation of life. It is of incredible significance to ranchers who invest the vast majority of their energy planting products and giving nourishment to humanity. One of the real issues undermining this common asset is soil disintegration..
Soil is the most important non-renewable resource on any farm. Healthy soil is key to a good
...contemporary environmental crisis, we are able to gather a concise understanding of issues that are often hard to explain yet alone understand. Wealth has become a power system evoking dualism of the western and third world. Power and quality of life is measured against the wealth of an individual. This is a result of human’s tendency to over utilize and eventually deplete the resources available to them inevitably leading to overpopulation. In the next fifty years, the success of the environmental movement may depend much more on its ability to change ethics and values. Environmental philosophy gives an invaluable lens into the issues of overpopulation by deconstructing complex dynamics within society. By spreading ideas within environmental philosophy to all different corners of the globe then everyone will have a chance to learn how to live rightly in the world.