From the beginning of human civilisation, agriculture has
played a pivotal role. When the responsibility of producing food for the many
is handled by the few, societies see an increase in those available to
innovate, create, and solve problems. If a society is no longer relying on the
resources that naturally occur, but are adapting the land around them to create
more, then larger groups of people are able to live in the same areas of land;
facilitating opportunities for more and more people to share ideas and work
together. Without the development of agriculture, humans would be unable to
exist in the large cities in which many of us now live, and there would be
little time for the technological advances which we as a species have made.
Dairy farming now; udderly different from its beginnings.
It is unsurprising,
then, that as populations have grown, so have farms grown not just in land use
but in overall output; developing new methods to produce more and more food for
a global population demanding to be fed. Battery farming, pesticides, selective
breeding, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are all innovations in the
farming industry which have been made to supply the fantastic number of humans
now living on the planet.
FAOSTAT, the statistics division of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, provides interactive data on food production, emissions, land use emissions, and many other related factors, with the options to look at specific years, countries, and crops, for anyone who would like to take a look at how these things have changed over time.
Farms around the world are varied in layout in techniques.
A terraced farm in Viet Nam.
With all of this land
use, production, and changes to the natural environment, it should come as no
surprise that agriculture has had as profound effect on the climate and the
environment as any other large and enduring industry. Soil degradation, water usage, erosion, and decreases in biodiversity are all issues inherent in our agricultural practices (
Jacobsen et al, 2013). There are
estimates that
nearly half of the world’s land is now used for agriculture, meaning enormous
alterations to the natural ecosystems and biodiversity in the area, while
agricultural production itself has large carbon footprints. Beef has an
estimated carbon footprint of 68.8kgC02e/kg – kg of carbon dioxide emitted per
kg of food produced – with poultry and pulses weighing in at 5.4kgCO2e/kg and
3.3kgCO2e/kg respectively (
Scarborough et al, 2014).
This all adds up to
the knowledge that agriculture is both entirely necessary for our society to
prevail, but also a major contributor to human induced climate change and
damages to the environment. Which creates the necessity for advances in
sustainable agriculture, from high-yield GMOs to low-input systems that work with
the surrounding environment. These climactic impacts, and the possibility for
mitigating them, will be the focus of this blog; a large topic which I intend
to break down, investigate, and discuss over the next few months.
I look forward to
your joining me.
Oh, and a side note. Look out for my use of the word 'agrapocalypse'. It's a term I coined while working on my undergraduate dissertation and, as far as I can tell, no one else got there before me. I use it to refer to the possibility of a future in which humanity's agricultural practices, in one way or another, lead to unforeseen, wide-reaching, and negative impacts that could cause profound changes in the way our environment, or our society, continues to function. I am a very fun person.
