Ads
related to: environmental impact of agriculture
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The environmental impact of agriculture is the effect that different farming practices have on the ecosystems around them, and how those effects can be traced back to those practices. [1] The environmental impact of agriculture varies widely based on practices employed by farmers and by the scale of practice.
There are numerous effects of climate change on agriculture, many of which are making it harder for agricultural activities to provide global food security.Rising temperatures and changing weather patterns often result in lower crop yields due to water scarcity caused by drought, heat waves and flooding. [5]
Traditional rice cultivation is the second biggest agricultural methane source after livestock, with a near-term warming impact equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from all aviation. [73] Government involvement in agricultural policy is limited due to the high demand for agricultural products like corn, wheat, and milk. [74]
Examples of environmental impacts of animal agriculture: Meat production is a main driver of deforestation in Venezuela; Pigs in intensive farming; Testing Australian sheep for exhaled methane production to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture; Farms often pump their animal waste directly into a large lagoon, which has environmental consequences.
Food loss and waste is a major part of the impact of agriculture on climate change (it amounts to 3.3 billion tons of CO 2 e emissions annually [5] [6]) and other environmental issues, such as land use, water use and loss of biodiversity.
Pollutants from agriculture greatly affect water quality and can be found in lakes, rivers, wetlands, estuaries, and groundwater. Pollutants from farming include sediments, nutrients, pathogens, pesticides, metals, and salts. [1] Animal agriculture has an outsized impact on pollutants that enter the environment.
Sustainable agriculture provides a potential solution to enable agricultural systems to feed a growing population within the changing environmental conditions. [6] Besides sustainable farming practices, dietary shifts to sustainable diets are an intertwined way to substantially reduce environmental impacts.
Agricultural productivity (including e.g. reliability of yields) is an important component of food security [144] and increasing it sustainably (e.g. with high efficiency in terms of environmental impacts) could be a major way to decrease negative environmental impacts, such as by decreasing the amount of land needed for farming or reducing ...