When the world thinks of New Zealand, they think of clean beautiful waterways, its clean green image and of course, the agriculture, but on the contrary this is actually the opposite. This false image brings in thousands of tourists every single year, benefiting immensely economically. Among tourism, the dairy industry is the biggest economic trade, earning the country around $13.7 billion NZ dollars in export alone. Dairy export in New Zealand goes way back, in 1882 we were the first country to ship off refrigerated items such as butter; this aided the country in having a considerable export trade with other countries around the world. These days New Zealand exports dairy goods to a diverse range of different countries, but China and the United
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It is now common knowledge that agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change worldwide, generating more methane gas than any other fossil fuel and carbon dioxide from cars combined. This ultimately makes it the leading cause for greenhouse emissions, causing the ozone layer to weaken leading to warming of the Earth. Cattle are producing about 150 billion gallons of methane every day through faeces, which is far more damaging to the planet than carbon dioxide. As demand for dairy is increasing, 98% of forests worldwide has already been cleared to create land for pastures. This is equivalent to a complete football field full of forest vegetation being destroyed every single second (Cowspiracy, 2014)! It is completely unnecessary and outrageous, wildlife habitats are being destroyed, forests that provide most of the oxygen humans need to survive are all being demolished and only for milk and cheese to consume. Forest deconstruction significantly affects the entire planet, forests are needed to species to survive and without them the human race and Earth itself will no longer exist. A very current issue to demonstrate the damage dairy production is having locally is the current water contamination issues. Recently Phahiatua had water contamination issues where the water contained E.coli, not exactly something one wants to be drinking or …show more content…
While agriculture produces immense levels of methane, it also consumes most of the world’s fresh water. The fresh water on the planet is all that there is, and with the Earth’s temperatures rising rain is becoming less and less frequent. Grain production is the primary use of water consummation with agriculture second, but the grain is grown as food for the cattle in the first place so really that equals agriculture to be the number one water waster. Dairy production uses around 34-76 trillion gallons of water annually, such a staggering amount. If you were to stop using all the Earth’s water for agriculture there would actually be enough fresh water and food available for everyone on the planet. Seems to me that agriculture is taking top priority over the Earth’s own in order to make money. With human population sizes largely increasing every day fresh water availability is expected to decrease greatly (Kyle,
It is now common knowledge that agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change worldwide, generating more methane gas than any other fossil fuel and carbon dioxide from cars combined. This ultimately makes it the leading cause for greenhouse emissions, causing the ozone layer to weaken leading to warming of the Earth. Cattle are producing about 150 billion gallons of methane every day through faeces, which is far more damaging to the planet than carbon dioxide. As demand for dairy is increasing, 98% of forests worldwide has already been cleared to create land for pastures. This is equivalent to a complete football field full of forest vegetation being destroyed every single second (Cowspiracy, 2014)! It is completely unnecessary and outrageous, wildlife habitats are being destroyed, forests that provide most of the oxygen humans need to survive are all being demolished and only for milk and cheese to consume. Forest deconstruction significantly affects the entire planet, forests are needed to species to survive and without them the human race and Earth itself will no longer exist. A very current issue to demonstrate the damage dairy production is having locally is the current water contamination issues. Recently Phahiatua had water contamination issues where the water contained E.coli, not exactly something one wants to be drinking or …show more content…
While agriculture produces immense levels of methane, it also consumes most of the world’s fresh water. The fresh water on the planet is all that there is, and with the Earth’s temperatures rising rain is becoming less and less frequent. Grain production is the primary use of water consummation with agriculture second, but the grain is grown as food for the cattle in the first place so really that equals agriculture to be the number one water waster. Dairy production uses around 34-76 trillion gallons of water annually, such a staggering amount. If you were to stop using all the Earth’s water for agriculture there would actually be enough fresh water and food available for everyone on the planet. Seems to me that agriculture is taking top priority over the Earth’s own in order to make money. With human population sizes largely increasing every day fresh water availability is expected to decrease greatly (Kyle,