Preview

Modern Methods of Farming Are Not Eco Freindly

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
586 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Modern Methods of Farming Are Not Eco Freindly
Modern Methods Of Farming Are Not Eco-Friendly

The farms nowadays are not at all eco-friendly as the methods used nowadays include burning of lot of fuel etc. An example for such a machine is the itachi which is a huge machine used on farms which uses a lot of energy etc. it might help the farmers a lot but it is not at all eco friendly.When it come to industrial farming practices, though, it is hard to have a discussion and keep a level head. I am talking about the huge multi thousand acre mono-culture farms, not the farms run by smaller business people.

Every part of our food supply chain needs to be judged not just by how low the cost in dollars is, but by how high the hidden costs are to consumer health, farmer health, societal health, animal health, and the health of the earth. Many make the argument that today our food supply is healthier and more varied than it has ever been. On the surface this can appear to be true, but scratch a little deeper and things look a bit different. As just one example on a grand scale, look at what farm runoff is doing to thousands of square mile of ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. Farm runoff, especially from big agri-businesses, is affecting the health of people, animals, water, and land all over the world.
I would not be surprised if the recent salmonella contamination of the water supply in Alamosa, Colorado was the result of farm or feedlot runoff into the ground water. Maybe not, I suppose it could have entered the system in many different ways. But, when farm runoff reaches the water supply as it inevitably does, the danger is not just from bacteria. Other chemicals like antibiotics, hormones, herbicides, and pesticides are contamination worries also.
Modern industrial scaled agriculture can be a difficult thing to evaluate. Some factory farms and feed lots are horrible places. Others do their best to be responsible in their farming methods. I agree that any argument against modern farming methods has to be countered

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Not only this, but “the farmers profit margin dropped from 35% in the 1950 's to about 9% today.” (Mckibben, 54) This means that “to generate the same income as it did in 1950, a farm today would need to be roughly four times as large.” (Mckibben, 55) As a result of this perpetual growth and centralization, problems like “huge sewage lagoons, miserable animals, vulnerability to sabotage and food-born illness”(mckibben, 61) have become commonplace. Not only this, but “we are running out of the two basic ingredients we need to grow food on an industrial scale: oil and water.” (Mckibben, 62) The situation has become so dire that “we are now facing a near simultaneous depletion of the underground aquifers which have been responsible for the unsustainable, artificial inflation of food production.” At this point of realization, Mckibben begins indulging the reader in a large number of facts that promote a more localized form of farming as the solution to a seemingly endless number of issues. Initially the point is raised that “sustainable agriculture leads to a 93% increase in per-hectare food production.” (Mckibben, 68) The next idea raised is that, “since World War 1, it has been cheaper to use…

    • 3032 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    SCI 207 Quiz

    • 1734 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Major agricultural pollutants such as pesticides can enter surface water and pose serious risks to human health.…

    • 1734 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Health problems are flooding America. Why? It is the unhealthy, toxic food that we are consuming every day, everywhere. To change America's path on health and food, we have to fix how we eat and know where our food come from. In the novel, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, the reality of our food is dived into. Pollan takes us on a journey where he explores the four food chains. Those four food chains that control America’s food consist of, Industrial, Industrial organic, Local sustainable and Hunter-gatherer. Industrial is what you find in most supermarkets the “cheap”, and full of additives, preservatives, and antibiotic food. Additionally, there is Industrial organic. This food chain is a bit healthier than it's partner Industrial,…

    • 1609 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Samuel Gander

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Although people have worked in agriculture for more than 10,000 years, advance in technology assisted with maintaining and protecting land, crops, and animals. The demand to keep food affordable encourages those working in the agriculture industry to operate as efficiently as possible (Newman & Ruiz, pp. 33-47).…

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Corporate farms are mass producing crops and meat, much more than the small family farms. In one year a corporate farm has hundreds to thousands of head of beef cattle and produce about 28.5 billion pounds of beef. Small family farms have anywhere from 10 to 25 head of beef cattle and sell a couple to family and family friends, also keeping one or so to themselves. Second, corporate farms are using more acres with larger equipment which is and can be a huge issue compared to small family farms. Using bigger machines makes cultivating, sowing, and harvesting easier but without rotating the crops into different fields each year the amount of minerals goes down and erosion goes up. Small family farms rotate their crops almost every year creating more minerals and less erosion in the land. Rotating crops lets the minerals to come back so that the land does not become an area where nothing can grow. Finally, small farms create jobs for many without jobs compared to corporate farms in which they are larger but do not create jobs. On a corporate farm it takes about 2 people to plant, fertilize, harvest, and transport about 5,000 acres of say corn. On a small family farms it takes about 3 to 4 in order to get this all done on about 300 acres of corn. The difference? The machines that the corporate farms use are huge machines that can conquer a field in less than half of the time…

    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Over the years, it seems as if the agricultural industry has been more focused on the quantity, more than quality. As a society, we have been manipulated by companies into thinking we are eating all natural ingredients. Before companies started serving our foods with chemicals, authentic food came from animals that were free to roam on pastures and that were freshly cut and packaged. Now the food comes from a factory farm, which is when animals are treated as if they were machines designed only to produce. Factory farming has a negative impact on animals, human health and the environment. As consumers, we should be in control of what we want in our food; and to do so, we should cut down on how much we buy from the markets.…

    • 1990 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    ON BUYIGN LOCAL SUMMARY

    • 1183 Words
    • 5 Pages

    There will always be environmental issues that exist, but the small steps can be taken in order to reduce them. There is so much more to farming than just the crops that are produced. Taking a look at some of the negative effects of large farms, many of them can be reduced. Burning fossil fuels releases many dangerous green house gases, which is causing the global warming phenomenon. Spriggs elaborates in her essay that the…

    • 1183 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Food Inc Summary

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The documented film "Food, Inc." rapt by Robert Kenner opens with the sentence, "The way we eat has altered in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000 years.” Later in the film it's illustrated that one of the significant deviations in what we eat is that our food source has been flooded with sugar and other advanced carbohydrates. It also highlights that not all the food we consume is good for our health. Some areas of food production such as meat and seed production are focused on this film. As well as bad practices in the food industry. Several of the United States food and farming industries are dangerous. And yet people often believe that food manufacturers and farmers are vigilant about keeping…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Too much of a good thing can be bad for us as human beings and the environment. We like to buy the biggest and best of everything. This has turned from buying big cars and big stereos to buying larger hamburgers and steaks. We as a nation have gone from having meat as a delicacy and eating it on occasion to most people eating only meat during every meal. We need to go back to eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat. We also need to find different ways to produce meat in ways that are safer for the animals and the environment.…

    • 890 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Of course there are ¨good¨ effects of having this way but it doesn't even compare to the disgusting effects that come out of the way these animals are being treated. The risks affect human health as well as environmental health. Surprisingly, The way animals are being treated is affecting humans in the long run. Factory farms aren’t always maintained as well as they can be and it can be a easy way for Salmonella, E. coli and other pathogens to be passed to humans. A pathogens are microorganisms that cause diseases. Many examples are bacteria, fungi, and viruses. These are found mostly in sewage and runoff water from farms. The bacteria is passed through meat, dairy, eggs, and person-to-person contact. To “destroy” unsanitary conditions in farms, animals are forced to eat large doses of antibiotics but bacteria is constantly evolving and becoming used to conditions that the farms a trying to prevent. If the antibiotics are used too much, used in the wrong way, or depending too much on them, it makes the risk for horrible, drug-resistant bacteria to be created and spread with people and animals. Because of the bacteria present from chicken waste, Pregnant women who live close to a farm can be effected in many bad ways. The manure from a factory farm makes its way into the groundwater of towns and could cause multiple miscarriages. According to PETA, a report by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture states that “ingesting water with nitrate levels above 10 milligrams per liter can cause “blue baby” syndrome (methemoglobinemia), which is a condition that prevents blood from carrying oxygen and which can lead to ‘increased rates of stomach cancer, birth defects, miscarriage, leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, reduced body growth and slower reflexes, and increased thyroid size.’” The report states that the nitrate in a “manure lagoon” on a usual factory farm can…

    • 1877 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Food Safty

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Over a hundred years ago the idea of farming and food consumption was very different then it is today. Regulation, education about health, research and technology, food processing, marketing, and wholesale has changed the food industry and the agriculture itself. Before going to the market or grocery store meant going to your back yard where you knew where everything was being grown and how it was being taken care of. Nowadays the majority of people do not raise their own animals or grow their own vegetables they go to a big chain or even a smaller local store to buy their food. When it comes to food safely and food production large farms and small farms are being negatively affected in many different areas. The current issues dealing with food safely and food production are, because there are a few big plants running are production of food its causing nation wide food poisoning and contamination, the public wants more regulation and centralized on farms which is then putting financial pressure on local farms, feedlots for animals, and our food is subject to terrorist attacks because only more then half our nations food is produced in the same place. I believe the way to fix our problem is to be informed and get involved.…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Factory Farming Effects

    • 1867 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Those who are unaware of the issues that factory farmed foods present to their health and to the environment may argue that there is no difference between meat from a happy cow raised in a large grassland and meat from a cow in a factory. They may even state that these animals are treated fairly and are better off in these factories with farmers to take care of them before they are used for their meat and milk. That, in these farms, the well-being of the animals is a priority to the farmers who raise them. They are better off in the factories than free in nature where they could be harmed. Some may even state that they have more of a risk to infectious diseases when they are walking around free in nature. Others, who simply do not care about the mistreatment or are ignorant to that issue may argue that the farmers have the right to their working freedom- however they may choose to go about it. This is their job and way of income for their families, which they are dependent on. Therefore, they need to continue these practices in order to stay financially stable. Nevertheless, factory farming is not considered illegal by the federal government so why should the farmers put a halt to their methods? The government even, in some cases, provides relief to the farmers while funding large companies who partake in methods of factory farming. A final argument that one may have against banishing…

    • 1867 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Family Farming In America

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages

    n today's growing economy family farms are decreasing and factory farms are increasing. America was built upon family farms. Without family farms, American’s wouldn't know the values of Hard work, family traditions,respect,morals , and the men who built america. Factory farms are slowly taking control of everything, they control their own prices because they are involved in buying the sows, raising the pigs, and processing the meat. Factory farms are bad for family farms because they take all the profit out of the market,they constantly get larger and larger,and they cut out the middleman. I have a family farm with 17 years of experience.…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Paleo Diet Research

    • 1622 Words
    • 7 Pages

    We are not in the stone ages anymore; we know the implications of meat and dairy industry on the environment. “Animal agriculture is responsible for 80-90% (34-76 trillion gallons annually) of US water consumption” (Anderson). The statistics to produce 1 pound of meat, 1 lb eggs, 1 lb cheese, 1 gallon milk, are 2,500, 477, 900, 1,000 gallons respectively (Anderson). A criticism of plant-based diets is that they are extreme, but what we are doing to animals and our planet is extreme. A severe change needs to be made in order to help reverse the damage we have done to the planet, and it is as simple as changing how we eat. Dr. Jennifer Rooke shuts down a common criticism of plant-based eating, that vitamins such as B12 are not being ingested from plant products. “Cattle no longer feed on grass and chickens do not peck in the dirt on factory farms”, so animals do not naturally absorb B12 (Rooke). Pesticides often kill B12 producing bacteria and insects in the soil, and heavy antibiotics kill B12 producing bacteria in animal’s stomachs (Rooke). Essentially the meat industry now gives a B12 vitamin to animals, so when a human eats the meat they get B12. “90% of B12 supplements produced in the world are fed to farm animals” (Rooke). Instead of murdering animals for food and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and species extinction, why…

    • 1622 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Factory Farms

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Factory farms are needed to feed the masses of people. Factory farms contain lots animals which mean they produce more food. Who cares if factory farms develop more food for us. People who eat unhealthy food will become obese. So what if healthy food isn’t as great as unhealthy food, at least you’re not getting fatter or suffering from diseases. Even though it’s much cheaper than healthy food you wouldn’t want your family getting sick or would you?…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics