Fatal Harvest - Why Industrial Agriculture is Killing Biodiveristy

The population of our planet is exponentially increasing with every passing day. As more people are born into the world, our demand for food increases as well. Within the last few centuries, the 21st century being the most influential, farmers have started introducing new farming techniques to increase yield from crops and animals in a shorter time frame. Some of these techniques include selective breeding of both plants and animals, use of chemical pesticides, use of fertilizers, and mass production of very few particular crops. Though these methods have sustained humans for several hundred years, there are copious amounts of negative side effects involving biodiversity, as well as ecosystems as a whole, that are becoming apparent.

The selective breeding of crops and animals has helped to eliminate several undesired traits that would affect productivity and reduce yields. However, this process reduces the amount of genes within the gene pools of each organism, and so, plants and animals can no longer naturally adapt to threats within their ecosystem. This problem, coupled with the fact that most farms only produce one type of crop, greatly reduces bio diversity within farms to the point that farmers are forced to protect these genetically productive, yet inferior, crops with pesticides. Furthermore, producing only one type of crop for years on end has devastating effects on soil fertility which forces the use of chemical fertilizers. Sadly, trying to fix the problems caused by unnatural human intervention with more unnatural human intervention is hardly effective.



When only a single type of plant is grown, soil fertility suffers and pests can easily target fragile crops.

Pesticides can only be used for so long until the pests begin to adapt. When this happens, stronger, more harmful poisons need to be developed in order to cope with the newly adapted super pests. In the meantime, the natural predators of the pests are killed off since they can’t adapt to the poison as fast as their prey can. The fertilizers and pesticides can also leech into nearby water sources and negatively affect other ecosystems, further reducing genetic diversity.

Pesticides only prolong the inevitable destruction of crops all while increasing pest numbers in the long run.

The true to solution to these problems is a change in strategy. Instead of focusing on producing as much food as possible in the short term, farmers need to be thinking about the long term. In order to accomplish this, farms need to be less like factories and more like regular ecosystems. Animals and crops should be diversified and well adapted to the area of the farm. This saves the cost of having to immunize animals and spray pesticides to protect crops all while avoiding the devastating environmental effects that would have otherwise occurred. Animal and plant waste can be used to fertilize the soil and techniques such as rotating diversified crops will ensure the soil maintains its health. Farms like these can also be expanded to much larger sizes than traditional farms since they work together with the ecosystem they occupy instead of disrupting it. In short, this sustainable type of farming can provide us with all the food we need at much less the cost.

Diversifying crops in this way helps keep soil fertile and allows each different organism to benefit the farm in it's on unique way.

Sources:

http://lifemorenatural.com/?p=1155

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/biodiversity/

http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/concept.htm

I Commented On: Derek Li and Brian Tsui