Preview

Eaarth

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
630 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Eaarth
Meredith Munson
Mrs. Prescott
AP Environmental Science
18 November 2013
Eaarth Chapter 4
1. KcKibben claims “when we eat from the industrial food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.” Explain what he means by this. What is the alternative?
It takes ten calories of fossil energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food, and when we try to address one problem, the other gets worse which is why starvation is on the rise on the rise that the United States now uses a huge chunk of its topsoil to grow gasoline, and not food. We need to produce lots of food on relatively small farms with little or nothing in the way of synthetic fertilizer or chemicals.
2. How did Britain increase food production during World War II by 91%? Why is this story included in the chapter? What evidence does he present that such a change could happen in American suburbs?
Pig clubs and Small gardens or allotments sprung up throughout the country to support themselves. To show that our farmers need better time and space management to improve their growth rate and spending. Small farms are capable of getting far more productive with each passing season, because they can take advantage of en information, new science, new technologies.
3. Compare modern mechanized monoculture to smaller scale polyculture. Explain why polyculture will be more sustainable as the climate continues to change.
Monoculture is mainly used in industrialized agriculture with many inputs of fossil fuels and chemicals to produce large amounts of a single crop. Polyculture is often locally based, and may be found in a subsistence agriculture practice that uses human and animal energy to produce smaller amounts of many different crops. Polyculture and working with nature can provide many and more sustainable solutions to our current challenges, and that in diversifying the food economy we will be much more resilient to future shocks. In doing so we can also reduce our

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    12) How did the Agricultural Revolution positively AND negatively impact humanity? Use pages 61-62 to create a list of 9-10 total details.…

    • 496 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • 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

    Joel Salatin, founder of Polyface farms talks about how he provides organic and affordable food. He grows grass that feeds the cows, the chickens follow the cows and eat the bugs. He provides the unattainable free lunch by not pay for fertilizer, expensive antibiotics or machinery to raise his chickens and cows. He goes on to say that he provides a healthier option than the industrial organic option. Industries that claim their products are organic use synthetic fertilizers and don’t have diversity in their plants. They use seeds that are breed to produce more so they can get more profit. In the movie Fresh Michael Pollan himself says monoculture: is the same species growing together. Nature doesn’t have monoculture and we use antibiotics to…

    • 203 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Monoculture farming has been the utmost efficient form of farming for years. Pollan elaborates on the meaning of efficiency by saying, “how you choose to measure efficiency makes all the difference, and industrial agriculture measures it, simply, by the yield of one chosen species per acre of land or farmer” (348). He looks at the word efficiency from a different point of view; he claims that the word efficacy by definition is “the very opposite of simplification” (348). Polyface Farm’s main objective is all about “mimicking relationships found in nature and layering one farm enterprise over another on the same base of land” (348). In order to measure efficiency, according to Pollan, the cost of the pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics, and parasites need to also be included in the production cost, not just the end products that are being produced.…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    S1/1415 Final Project

    • 1372 Words
    • 6 Pages

    12. Discuss local agricultural problems and opportunities. What major changes in agricultural practices are likely to occur in the coming decades? With what consequences? What types of farming activities are carried on in your locale? What is the balance between large and small farms? What are the major products? How much of the produce is used in local areas? How much is shipped out and where does it go?…

    • 1372 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    For hundreds of years, people have grow with a concept of the more is better. The growth of nation economy makes more money and therefore a better quality of life. But now, things have changed. He descripted our new eaarth as “a played-out rock and a hot place”. We are drilling and extracting fossil fuels, burning them into CO2 that causes greenhouse effect.…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mankind differentiates itself from other species in its willingness to exhaust its environment in order to satisfy its immediate needs of the essential components: food and water. In order to satisfy the demands of an ever-increasing global population, we rely on an international, industrial food system. When it comes to global warming we think about how climate change will impact farming, but not how farming will impact climate change. The impact of the food system on global warming is enormous. It accounts for roughly one-third of the human-caused global warming effect (Lappé 854). Further aggravating the situation, the food we consume is processed leaving it with fewer nutrients and proteins. Anna Lappé in the essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork” and Michael Pollan in the essay “Why Bother?” explain the ongoing…

    • 1223 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Analyze the ways in which technology, government policy, and economic conditions changed American agriculture in the period of 1865-1900. in your answer, evaluate farmers’ response.…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Environmental Issues Significant amounts of resources are invested in food production and regardless of whether it is consumed or wasted, contributes to pressure on the availability of resources such as land, fresh water, labor, energy, and fuel (Buzby et al, 2014). Not only does wasted food contribute to excess consumption of fresh water and fossil fuels, it also accounts for three-hundred million barrels of oil per year (Hall, Guo, Dore, & Chow,…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Agriculture is the largest employing industry in the world. The Green Revolution will keep that number high because of the amount of lateral facilities and resource plants that are affiliated with agriculture. Despite limits, such as falling…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Esaay

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages

    My Class room experience is going good, for the first two weeks Iv gotten together with the kids a lot, I still need to know some of there names better. My experience with the teacher is good, she’s had me do lots of putting papers away, which is good for me, expect a few times she forgets my name. Most important, my experience with the kids homework is good because when they come and ask me for help, I am able to do it, and it makes me feel good to help them out.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mass food production has become an increasing issue in the world. It was created to help solve the lack of nutrition problem that was created by the staggering population growth of the human race. Short term it has solved the issue it was created for. But there are inherent risks that come with this type of food production. Mass food production causes a great deal of stress on the environment. The land, air, and water in the areas used for this production are slowly being destroyed. The problem does not just reside with feedlots; there are also issues with the fish farming industry as well as the agriculture industry.…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Research and describe conventional agricultural systems and agricultural systems that use polyculture. Compare and contrast the two systems in terms of environmental impact, human health impacts, and cost.…

    • 1585 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The human population is expected to double in the next 50 years, and the ever-growing global population needs vast amounts of food, energy and raw materials. We cannot continue to get our food, energy and raw materials in the way we do now without damaging the earth's environment beyond repair. Pollution, deforestation, over-fishing, the impact of intensive farming and above all global warming will see to that. We need to find ways of improving food productivity, and getting our energy and raw materials in more sustainable ways.…

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many of us are uninformed about this main source of energy and how much we can take from the world. We barely know how much the world spent fossil fuels yearly to fulfill our electricity needs. The main problem here is fossil fuels are un-renewable. It takes millions of years for them to be formed and ready to use.…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays