Ecosystems are intricately complex communities, filled with an abundance and diversity of life that exist together in an interdependent web. Intensive agriculture changes all that. Often, natural places, life forests or meadows, are cleared to provide space for monocrops. As the name indicates, monocrops are vast fields of the same type of plant—row after row. Corn, soy, and wheat are a few of the plants that make up monocrops—grains that are often used to feed animals raised for food.
Monocropping usually requires enormous amounts of pesticides and fungicides to keep plants alive, since they are not supported by the essential biodiversity that helps crops better withstand attacks from insects and pests, eliminating the need for pesticides in the first place. Artificial fertilizers are also needed since monocropping depletes the soil of its natural life-giving nutrients. Intensive farming is not only bad, it is an atrocity—and one that produces nearly all the food people consume in places like the United States.
The defining characteristic of intensive animal farming is cruelty. Animals are treated so poorly that there is simply no question that the architects of this food system did not truly consider the natural needs and well-being of animals when designing it. Farmed animals are welcomed into the world with violent mutilations, without painkillers.
Portions of the beaks of chickens, ducks, and turkeys are sliced off, and some have parts of their toes removed as well. Male cows and pigs can be castrated. The tails of pigs and cows can be chopped off, while their ears are pierced with identifying tags. They are given only numbers. Never names. After this jarring and unimaginably painful start to their lives, they are trucked to factory farms where they will spend most of their short, brutal lives.
Birds, like chickens, are prevented from ever taking to the skies, or often even fully stretching their wings , while livestock animals will never get to root around in the earth with their noses and hooves. Instead, all they will ever know is a darkened, cramped existence where they are left no choice but to live and lie down in their own feces. This is their life, until their final trip—to the slaughterhouse.
In the US, federal welfare laws mandate that farmed animals must be killed in ways that are as painless as possible but, bafflingly, this law excludes the billions of chickens, turkeys, and other birds who are killed each year. But because farming corporations want to make as much money as possible, they force workers to rush the killing process, resulting in many instances of improper stunning.
From Phys. Access to fertilizers is especially important as space limitations in urban agriculture require more intensive farming and greater fertilizer use per area than rural areas From the Cambridge English Corpus. Organic farming is an information intensive farming technique and successful conversion requires knowledge and information acquisition1. In turn, efficiency translated into intensive farming by the farmholder and his family.
For example, organic farming is an information intensive farming method that requires significant learning and changes in the farming system1. This constitutes a farm of considerable size which produces a very respectable income, considering multiple cropping and intensive farming. According to the proposal, 60 families would work in extensive farming and 30 in intensive farming.
We collected data to characterize the work of the farmers and to analyze the development of this work, starting from the initial, more intensive farming practices. These farmers' past experience in intensive farming with grazing did not seem to affect the order in which they mobilized their key tools during the transition. If you were writing this story in these days of intensive farming , in what form would you have the "diamonds" come to the farmer?
From Project Gutenberg. He is thrifty and industrious, intelligent and an expert in intensive farming. But intensive farming has its own triumphs, though they may be less spectacular. Who grew the ingredients that it made up? How did their farming practices affect their environment? Do they make enough money from their trade to sustain themselves and their family? Agriculture is arguably one of the most critical activities we as a society undertake. Yet it is also one of the most destructive, in its current form.
The truth is, there are tradeoffs to weigh up and consider in any human endeavor. Farmers are stuck between a rock and a hard place - needing to balance the productivity and profitability of their farm against the environmental impact they leave on the ecosystem around them. Intensive farming refers to a method of food production that relies on the intensification and mechanization of agricultural practices. The aim of intensive farming is to increase the productivity and profitability of a piece of land.
Usually, this higher productivity is achieved by high-level inputs of different factors that help with yields, such as capital, labor, fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, and others. Intensive farming can also include the use of genetically modified crops that lend themselves to the harsher conditions created by the higher use of these chemical inputs. A good example of this kind of intensive farming in action is the combined use of Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, and its genetically modified soybean seeds, known as Roundup Ready seeds.
Roundup is a glyphosate-based herbicide that kills everything in its path. The Roundup Ready seeds are modified to be resistant to glyphosate herbicide, so they can grow in high yields undisturbed by weeds or other plants. The principles of intensive farming can also be applied to animal agriculture. For example, the large-scale rearing of cattle in small spaces usually requires or relies on prophylactic administration of antibiotics to prevent disease spreading among the clustered populations, increasing farm productivity.
In short, intensive farming relies on chemicals and other methods to accelerate the growth of a land area's or farmer's productivity. Every last square inch of land is used to the. The essence of intensive farming is that it depends on chemicals and high-yielding varieties HYV of crops to accelerate the growth and increase the crop yield. 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.
The agrochemical effects of industrial agriculture conditioned serious governmental regulation worldwide via banning the most dangerous chemicals, especially those containing neonicotinoids. 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. Also, the same agro culture requires the same set of nutrients, and intercropping vs. Precision farming is extremely helpful in industrial agriculture and is part of the business-as-usual practices of many enterprises nowadays. Field monitoring with drones and satellites enable industrial agriculture landowners to grasp the situation in real time day and night while historical data for profound analysis is available on online agro platforms.
Even the most remote farms can be inspected as the scale of internet connectivity expands. Locally, field sensors accurately report the state of things.
For example, trunk diameter sensors in almond trees signal the urge for irrigation. Another significant discovery for intensive agriculture is GPS providing the exact location data and thus enabling to distinguish separate areas.
Smartphone and tablet apps help agronomists inspect and manage farming operations, order supplies, schedule product sales, and track transportation from any place connected to the internet. Achievements of electronics and robotics find their implementation in intensive farming as well, assisting in machinery control, mechanical and chemical weed and pest management, seeding and harvesting, etc. Experiments of replacing sunlight with LED open new horizons to abandoned area use for agricultural needs, like attics, mines, former plants, or factories.
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. Remote sensing and satellite data-based agricultural platforms are greatly helpful to industrial agriculture supporters, too. They enable farmers to reduce chemical allocations only to affected areas.
Crop Monitoring is all-in-one farming software which allows more accurate and, thus, cost-effective decision-making to industrial agriculture practitioners. It provides credible information for everyday agricultural routine, including weather analytics, data on vegetation state, productivity, efficient distribution of resources, and overall field inspection. Productivity maps let farmers compare historical data on a specific region to identify the most and the least productive areas for optimal seed distribution in intensive farming.
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