Weekly Blog for Class 11: The Evolution of Food Production and the Importance of Changing our Habits

Coinciding with world population exponentially skyrocketing in the past century, as has the rates of food production and consumption. That seems to be rather obvious. However, what is not obviously to a larger part of the world is how environmentally threatening and dangerous some of the practices that have been incorporated to fit the needs of these boosted rates. Some of these harmful practices are leading to issues like species extinction, water pollution, and soil infertility to name a few. While feeding such a large world population is no easy task and hunger still exists in many parts of the world, food production practices can definitely be improved to not only reduce environmental damage, but to stimulate economic systems as well.

The demand for food is higher than ever and to fit the wants and needs of their consumers nearly all farms have converted to some form of industrialized agriculture. This form of agriculture exists solely to get maximum crop yields in the most efficient manner possible and for the reason utilizes high amounts of fossil fuels, water, pesticides, and fertilizers, all of which pose their own unique threats to the environment. For example, the excessive usage of water in crop irrigation can contaminate topsoil as well as waterlog the soil used for crops, which in hand causes them to be unfit to carry out said growth. Pesticides can also make croplands unhealthy for food production as well as pollute the air and local waterways. Another major drawback of pesticide usage is that they can accidentally poison other local wildlife or the target of said pesticide usage may be integral to local food webs, which as a whole can cause some drastic disruption to ecosystems. Like pesticides, fertilizers can also contaminate water supply through the phenomenon of eutrophication, when the environment becomes overly enriched with nutrients. This excess input of nutrients can lead to algae bloom, which can create toxins or disrupt food webs within marine ecosystems. The high concentration of nutrients found in fertilizers are what causes eutrophication to occur and is happening more than ever today thanks to the high usage of fertilizers in order to boost crop yields. While the argument can be made that yes, all of these aspects of industrialized agriculture do allow for more efficient, abundant crop growth and help the end goal of putting food on the table, the environmental dangers of these practices and tools cannot be overlooked. I’ve included the graphic below to help display the disparity across industrialized and organic farming in terms of environmentally friendliness.

In the graphic above there was one point that stood out to me, but not really for its environmental repercussions. Industrialized agriculture is something that allows for crops to globally export-orientation, which from an environmental standpoint you can view as something that increases pollution due to the fossil fuels required for transportation. However, I would like to discuss this matter from an economic side of things. The food industry is dominated by a handful of major corporations that are able to produce a majority of the world’s processed food as well as crops. In addition, most of these companies are completely industrialized which not only limits job opportunities, but also is a threat to the existing farming jobs as profit margins are not nearly as high as they used to be for local, family-owned farms. To put into perspective how much the farming industry has changed in 1910, 18% of the American workforce were farmers, now it currently sits at 1%. Not only is supporting local agriculture better for the economy in your area, it also is much better for the environment as local farms tend to use generally organic processes. I would also like to add that from a personal standpoint, supporting farms in your community is more reassuring as you know where the food comes from and is more likely to taste better as it was not processed, genetically enhanced, or made artificially.

Commercialized fishing and its effect on local fishermen is very similar to the agricultural relationship described in the paragraph above. However, the commercialized fishing has some pretty serious environmental drawbacks as well. Scientists estimate that 87% of the world’s commercial fisheries have either been completely exploited or overfished, which should be extremely considering that this can lead to species extinction and aquatic ecosystem collapse. Commercialized fishing is not the only force that can cause these repercussions either. The high usage of fossil fuels contributes to both ocean warming and acidification, which can destroy aquatic habitats, causing marine species to either migrate or face death. The rapid acceleration of climate change is causing the increase in water temperatures to rise at a rate faster than organisms can adapt to become fit for the new conditions. Like the problems mentioned above with farming, these issues too are a result of human activity and lifestyle choices. It is up to us to change our behaviors in order to see these environment threats be minimized at the least, but hopefully eliminated. There are ways to solve both sets of problems, which I’ll leave below, but I would like to continue to emphasize how much of this change is dependent on us, our

environmental literacy, and our willingness to make changes. Word Count: 877

Question: From a geographic perspective, where are the most biodiverse marine ecosystems located? Australia and Oceania or somewhere near the Americas?