Impact of modern agriculture on environment?

Answer 1

Excess use of man-made fertilizers, tillage equipment exposing the soil on a greater scale than in the past, herbicide usage on crops, manure management issues with intensive livestock production (dairy, poultry, feedlot beef, hogs), carbon emissions from use of machinery in the fields, methane emissions from inefficient manure management of intensive animal agricultural systems and from excess production of cattle, soil erosion by tilling over crops instead of using more sustainable and efficient crop management strategies like no-till seeding and by over-grazing from those who have poor pasture management strategies, the list goes on.

Answer 2

Canadian Broadcasting Company [CBC] Radio - 35 years old program - [Doctor David Suzuki was the first Host of] "Quirks and Quarks" - today clearly and certainly showed, by demonstration, that "Modern Agriculture" is unsustainable, mainly because the 'improvements brought by modern agriculture' were and are made possible only due to the use of coal and oil - Buried Carbon.

By this Stage, it should be The Majority that states "What is still underground must stay there".

Answer 3

Impacts COULD but don't necessarily include increased water or wind erosion, depleted groundwater supplies in irrigated areas, nutrient loading of water bodies, pesticide contamination or livestock odors. That's just a few off the top of my head. Just keep in mind that industry or urban areas can cause the exact same problems, sometimes even worse.

Source(s):soil conservation tech, also teach pollution control to students Soil Erosion

Raindrops bombarding bare soil result in the oldest and still most serious problem of agriculture. The long history of soil erosion and its impact on civilization is one of devastation. Eroded fields record our failure as land stewards. W. C. Lowdermilk (1953) described several civilizations that collapsed because of erosion. At the end of his historical sweep of failed civilizations, Lowdermilk warned that unless we want to experience a similar fate, we had better heed these lessons of the past and safeguard our soils.

Irrigation

Adequate rainfall is never guaranteed for the dryland farmer in arid and semiarid regions, and thus irrigation is essential for reliable pro auction. Irrigation ensures sufficient water when needed and also allows farmers to expand their acreage of suitable cropland. In fact, we rely heavily on crops from irrigated lands, with fully one-third of the world's harvest coming from that 17 percent of cropland that is under irrigation (Poster, 1985). Unfortunately, current irrigation practices severely damage the cropland and the aquatic systems from which the water is withdrawn and partially returns.

Agriculture and the Loss of Genetic Diversity

As modern agriculture converts an ever-increasing portion of the earth's land surface to monoculture, the genetic and ecological diversity of the planet erodes. Both the conversion of diverse natural ecosystems to new agricultural lands and the narrowing of the genetic diversity of crops contribute to this erosion.

Chemical Contamination"In nearly all respects agriculture became an industry, sharing with the traditional manufacturing industries the problems of waste byproducts disposal." Young (1983) is referring in this quote to the changes in modern agriculture that have occurred over the past 45 years since the introduction of cheap inorganic nitrogen fertilizers. Six kilograms (13 lb) of pesticides, 63.5 kg (140 lb) of actual nitrogen, 19 kg (42 lb) of phosphate--these were the average chemical inputs per irrigable acre in California in 1980. In 1 year, California alone uses 55 million kilograms (121 million pounds) of restricted-use pesticides (Afford and Ferguson, 1982). Along with the promise of high production that these figures imply is the potential environmental pollution that these massive chemical inputs can cause.

Answer 4

Agriculture is a human activity. Without human activities it would be completely impossible to have agriculture therefore it has had a very positive affect on it.