Environmental impact of agriculture

The negative impact of agriculture is an old issue that remains a concern even as experts design innovative means to reduce destruction and enhance eco-efficiency.

Agriculture contributes to a number larger of environmental issues that cause environmental degradation including: climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss,[5] dead zones, genetic engineering, irrigation problems, pollutants, soil degradation, and waste.

[7] The United Nations Environment Programme's 2021 "Making Peace with Nature" report highlighted agriculture as both a driver and an industry under threat from environmental degradation.

Animal agriculture, in particular meat production, can cause pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, disease, and significant consumption of land, food, and water.

The effects stem from the altered hydrological conditions caused by the installation and operation of the irrigation scheme.

The unintended consequences of pesticides is one of the main drivers of the negative impact of modern industrial agriculture on the environment.

[17] Alternatives to heavy use of pesticides, such as integrated pest management, and sustainable agriculture techniques such as polyculture mitigate these consequences, without the harmful toxic chemical application.

[33] Deforestation is clearing the Earth's forests on a large scale worldwide and resulting in many land damages.

[44] In 2000 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) found that "the role of population dynamics in a local setting may vary from decisive to negligible," and that deforestation can result from "a combination of population pressure and stagnating economic, social and technological conditions.

"[45] Agricultural pollution refers to biotic and abiotic byproducts of farming practices that result in contamination or degradation of the environment and surrounding ecosystems, and/or cause injury to humans and their economic interests.

Once in the environment these pollutants can have both direct effects in surrounding ecosystems, i.e. killing local wildlife or contaminating drinking water, and downstream effects such as dead zones caused by agricultural runoff is concentrated in large water bodies.

[56] In the United States and Europe especially, large-scale agriculture has grown and small-scale-agriculture has shrunk due to financial arrangements such as contract farming.

Bigger farms tend to favour monocultures, overuse water resources, and accelerate deforestation and soil quality decline.

[63][58][60] Tillage erosion results in soil degradation, which can lead to significant reduction in crop yield and, therefore, economic losses for the farm.

The use of plastic mulch for vegetables, strawberries, and other row and orchard crops exceeds 110 million pounds annually in the United States.

[5] Organic farming is a multifaceted sustainable agriculture set of practices that can have a lower impact on the environment at a small scale.

However, in most cases organic farming results in lower yields in terms of production per unit area.

[68] Therefore, widespread adoption of organic agriculture will require additional land to be cleared and water resources extracted to meet the same level of production.

This data has some issues because there were several results that showed a negative effect on these things when in an organic farming system.

What began as a small scale, environmentally conscious practice has now become just as industrialized as conventional agriculture.

[74] Practices include maximal recycling of farm waste and adding composted material from non-farm sources.

[75][76][77][78] Regenerative agriculture on small farms and gardens is based on permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, restoration ecology, keyline design, and holistic management.

Large farms are also increasingly adopting regenerative techniques, using "no-till" and/or "reduced till" practices.

[79] Regenerative agriculture mitigates climate change through carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and sequestration.

Conservation tillage has shown to improve many things such as soil moisture retention, and reduce erosion.

[83] It relies on predation, parasitism, herbivory, or other natural mechanisms, but typically also involves an active human management role.

[84] Natural enemies of insects play an important part in limiting the densities of potential pests.

Biological control agents of weeds include seed predators, herbivores, and plant pathogens.