More handpicked essays just for you.
What is appropriate technology in agriculture
Role Of Technology In Agriculture
Essay about the advancement of technology in farming
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: What is appropriate technology in agriculture
One can look back in time and see how things have changed. It might have been because of one thing that set a different course, or a series of small things that might have seemed insignificant at the time. The culture of farming has changed drastically over the years due to new founded ideas relating to the food system. In the article, “How Genetically Modified Crops Have Transformed Rural America”, Adam Riesselman explains the effects of GMOs on farm life. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan explains how the production of corn has changed farms. Both these pieces of writing express ideas about GMOs, new technology used on the farm, and the diversity of crops on farms. Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are created in a lab by
Many families in America can’t decide what food chain to eat from. In the book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan lists four food chains: Industrial, Industrial Organic, Local Sustainable, and Hunter-Gatherer. The Industrial food chain is full of large farms that use chemicals and factories. Industrial Organic is close to it except it doesn’t use as many chemicals and the animals have more space. Local Sustainable is where food is grown without chemicals, the animals have freedom and they eat what they were born to eat. Lastly, Hunter-Gatherer is where you hunt and grow your own food. The omnivore's dilemma is trying to figure out what food chain to eat from. Local Sustainable is the best food chain to feed the United States because it is healthy and good for the environment.
Recently my brother started a modified Paleo diet. The Paleolithic diet claims to be based on the eating habits of Paleolithic humans during the Paleolithic era. For his own nutritional needs he has chosen to combine the Paleo diet and parts of the bulletproof diet created by Dr. David Perlmutter. He has been talking about how great his diet is and that he’s never felt better. My older sister Mar-y-sol argues that while the Paleo diet has some good ideas such as reducing the amount of processed wheat we consume (because the modern diet has far too much processed wheat) it is an out of balance diet and that it goes to the extreme. She prefers to eat a healthy balanced diet with everything in moderation or the omnivore’s ideal diet . These points of view seem valid so I decided to find out what makes a diet healthy.
Millions of animals are consumed everyday; humans are creating a mass animal holocaust, but is this animal holocaust changing the climate? In the essay “ The Carnivores Dilemma,” written by Nicolette Hahn Niman, a lawyer and livestock rancher, asserts that food production, most importantly beef production, is a global contributor to climate change. Nicolette Niman has reports by United Nations and the University of Chicago and the reports “condemn meat-eating,” and the reports also say that beef production is closely related to global warming. Niman highlights, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides are the leading greenhouses gases involved in increasing global warming. A vast majority of people across the world consumes meat and very little people are vegetarian, or the people that don’t eat meat, but are there connections between people and meat production industry when it comes to eating food and the effect it has on the climate? The greenhouse gases, methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxides are not only to blame, but we should be looking at people and industrialized farming for the leading cause of greenhouse gases in agriculture and the arm-twisting dilemma we have been lured into, which is meat production itself.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma In the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan challenges his readers to examine their food and question themselves about the things they consume. Have we ever considered where our food comes from or stopped to think about the process that goes into the food that we purchase to eat every day? Do we know whether our meat and vegetables picked out were raised in our local farms or transported from another country? Michael pollen addresses the reality of what really goes beyond the food we intake and how our lives are affected.
In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan talks about 4 different models that we consume, purchase, and add it to our daily lives. Michael Pollan travels to different locations around the United States, where he mentions his models which are fast food, industrial organic, beyond organic, and hunting. I believe that the 3 important models that we need to feed the population are fast food, industrial organic, and beyond organic. Fast food is one of the most important models in this society because people nowadays, eat fast food everyday and it is hurting us in the long run. We need to stick to beyond organic or industrial organic food because it is good for our well being. Ever since the government and corporations took over on what we eat, we have lost our culture. In the introduction of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan states that we have lost our culture:
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
In the essay “Against Meat”, Jonathan Foer talks about how factory farmed animals is treated and how they make a meat by killing them brutally. They don't care about the animals they just killed them and make their eat to sell them because they just want to make money. As Michael pollan balme fast food industry about making food which is unhealthy for people and for making more processed food to make money. So Jonathan Foer and Michael pollan both blames fast food companies. Michael pollan is not telling people to stop eating meat but just warning them to not eat more processed food which can make them sick. So Jonathan Foer agree with Michael Pollan for some reasons.
Filial cannibalism is a biological phenomenon where an adult or a parent of a species attacks and consumes all or some of its offspring. This behaviour is quite common among fish species, the family poeciliidae in particular. Filial cannibalism in poeciliids is very well documented due to their commercial popularity as aquaria fish. Poeciliids are live-bearers and engage in partial clutch cannibalism where the parents only cannibalise on some of their offspring (Manica 2002). Scientists do not fully understand as to why this behaviour exists as it is seemingly disadvantageous since the act decreases their reproductive success and ability to pass on their genes. Yet, if the behaviour was to the detriment of the poeciliids the trait would not have been favoured, evolutionarily speaking. Filial cannibalism is so widespread among poeciliids, which means that there must be benefits to this behaviour. However, does this behaviour only benefit those in captivity or is it as prominent in wild poeciliids?
In 1936, scientists discovered the use of antibiotics for treatment of human diseases; people couldn’t stop talking about it. Before antibiotics, if a family member had an incurable disease like tonsillitis, scarlet fever, or cholera, the only hope they had would be to consult a priest to pray for their loved ones and to hope their god would do the rest (Morton 22). After the discovery, the infectious diseases that frightened everyone were then curable and manageable. Antibiotics started being used worldwide and people were ecstatic. The spread of antibiotic use was unstoppable; dentist even started using antibiotics for post treatments. Farmers realized that pumping their animals with antibiotics would prevent diseases and deaths. This led to factory farms (CAFOs) and the use of growth hormones. 10 years after the discovery of antibiotic use in humans there was also the discovery that genes were able to be transferred between organisms. It was said these GMOs (genetically modified organisms) could be altered in a positive way; for example, to up nutrition content in a product (National Research Council 89). In 1984 the first product of a GM food went on the market: the Flavr Savr tomato. The wide use of antibiotics lead to overuse, and people and animals started to become antibiotic resistant; therefore, they were unable to utilize the drug if they needed to because their bodies would reject the drugs therapeutic intent (65 Health Risks of GM Foods). After seeing the effect of the use of antibiotics in foods, people became hesitant towards the use of genetically modified organisms. The use of antibiotics, growth hormones, and GMOs are not healthy and...
Genetically modified food’s, or GMOs, goal is to feed the world's malnourished and undernourished population. Exploring the positive side to GMOs paints a wondrous picture for our planet’s future, although careful steps must be taken to ensure that destruction of our ecosystems do not occur. When GMOs were first introduced into the consumer market they claimed that they would help eliminate the world’s food crisis by providing plants that produced more and were resistant to elemental impacts like droughts and bacterial contaminants, however, production isn’t the only cause for the world’s food crisis. Which is a cause for concern because the population on the earth is growing and our land and ways of agriculture will not be enough to feed everyone sufficiently. No simple solutions can be found or applied when there are so many lives involved. Those who are hungry and those who are over fed, alike, have to consider the consequences of Genetically Modified Organisms. Food should not be treated like a commodity it is a human necessity on the most basic of levels. When egos, hidden agendas, and personal gains are folded into people's food sources no one wins. As in many things of life, there is no true right way or wrong way to handle either of the arguments and so many factors are involved that a ‘simple’ solution is simply not an option.
Cannibalism is a concept that is foreign to modern society despite its pertinence in recent human culture. In the essay “Cannibalism: It Still Exists,” Linh Ngo explains the concept of cannibalism, discussing in further detail and comparing and contrasting the different types of cannibalism and the situations in which it was utilized. By incorporating devices such as definition, illustration, and cause and effect, the essay was effective in relaying the idea that cannibalism is still around.
GMO 's provide us with the increased amounts of food that we need to feed an constantly growing population. As Nobel Prize laureate, Dr Norman E. Borlaug puts it: "There is no evidence to indicate that biotechnology is dangerous. After all, mother nature has been doing this kind of thing for God knows how long,". (Tervil Okoko, AgBioWorld) GMO 's have been around for far longer than people give them credit for – and in fact many of the foods we 've grown to love today like apples, bananas, grapes, and potatoes have all been modified for ease of human consumption. GMO 's reduce the amount of land needed in order to plant crops, as they produce crops of the same size with more yield than non-genetically engineered food. GMO 's allow for more nutritious, resilient, and better tasting food. There are currently no credible studies proving that the use of rDNA can lead to health defects in humans, and genetically engineered foods go through more rigorous testing than non-GMO 's. Contrary to the statistics, GMO 's are currently being developed to reduce pesticide use through intrinsic pest resistance – and a German study that was published on PLOS even concluded that “On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%” (Wilhelm Klümper & Matin Qaim, PLOS). GMO 's can even help us fight back against climate change, as it allows the creation of crops resistant to severe weather – like droughts, which California (one of the best sources for crops in the nation) is currently experiencing with no particular end date in sight. Additionally, because of the aforementioned factors, GMO 's can be used to fight back against world hunger. They 're produced in mass quality, are cheaper, and more durable than non-genetically modified foods – in short, they 're an incredibly
“The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that their treatment has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality."(Schopenhauer). I always wondered why some people are not so drawn to the consumption of meat and fed up with only one thought about it. Why so many people loathe of blood, and why so few people can easily kill and be slaughter animal, until they just get used to it? This reaction should say something about the most important moments in the code, which was programmed in the human psyche. Realization the necessity of refraining from meat is especially difficult because people consume it for a long time, and in addition, there is a certain attitude to the meat as to the product that is useful, nourishing and even prestigious. On the other hand, the constant consumption of meat has made the vast majority of people completely emotionless towards it. However, there must be some real and strong reasons for refusal of consumption of meat and as I noticed they were always completely different. So, even though vegetarianism has evolved drastically over time, some of its current forms have come back full circle to resemble that of its roots, when vegetarianism was an ethical-philosophical choice, not merely a matter of personal health.
If crops were affected by droughts, disease and insects, having destroyed many acres across America’s Midwest region, the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) would not be beneficial in regenerating new crops. Genetically modifying foods (GMOs) “are plants or animals that have been genetically engineered with DNA from bacteria, viruses or other plants and animals that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding” (nongmoproject.org). Most research done has concluded no positive benefits in using GMOs. There are serious health risks associated with eating GM foods based on scientific research done around the world. The purpose of GMOs are to increase production of crop yield and reduce pesticide use but research says otherwise. If farmers wanted to continue using GMOs to produce crops, labeling should be mandatory to allow consumers to have a conscious choice whether or not to eat GM food. Through research it has been proven that the use of GMOs to increased production of crops during a time of drought or disease have no benefits, just risks.
The images selected from the book, What the World Eats, depict three families around the world and their food supply for a week. These families range from poverty stricken and living in a third world country, to middle class families living in more developed countries. The family's relative, housing and financial situations, climate, family size, and available resources are determinants in the contrasting diets of families living in developed countries as opposed to the diet of families living in underdeveloped countries. The Aboubaker family is a displaced family, originally from the Darfur Providence in Sudan, currently living in a refugee camp located in Chad, an underdeveloped country.