Agriculture is the practice or science of farming. It includes the cultivation of soil for the growing and rearing of animals to provide food and other products for humans such as wools and fibers. It uses more Natural resources (materials or substances that occur in nature) than all other human actions in the entirety of the world we live in today. Our demand for meat, dairy, population, and production have put a stress on our natural resources. Agriculture is not only an interesting process but it is also a very important one as well. The more that our population grows the more agricultural farming is necessary for the survival of our society, especially since our population is increasing at an extremely high rate. For our current
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It has caused climate changes, global water withdrawals (70%), deforestation, and has even affected our atmosphere! We have cleared and altered lands to be able to grow more crops due to the fact that every day the number of people that need to be fed increases. Agriculture is not an option or a luxury; it is a necessity…even if it is slowly destroying our world. A great portion of our world is used for agricultural purposes. To be more specific, 40% of earths land surface is devoted to agriculture. For example: there is about 16 million square kilometers of croplands which is what we use to grow crops such as soy beans, rice, etc. There is also about 30 million square kilometers of land (about the size of Africa) which is where animals live. Farmers and industries have taken over the best lands leaving not much land left to expand towards. As Jonathan Foley stated in his video “The other inconvenient truth”, “Were using a planets worth of land”. The need for agriculture will not decrease or go away as the years advance, on the contrary it will continue to increase and we’ll eventually have to double or maybe even triple agricultural production. This is because our population is growing at a rate of about 75 million people per year. There have been different options given as “solutions” to our problem (doubling agriculture while not destroying …show more content…
There have also been other solutions offered such as precision agriculture, new crop varieties, drip irrigation, and of course better tillage practices. I believe that the best solution out of these is finding better tillage practices. There are many different types of tillage practices such as reduced-till, Conventional-till or intensive-till, and conservation tillage. Conservation tillage as stated by the OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms is a tillage system that creates a suitable soil environment for growing a crop and that conserves soil, water and energy resources mainly through the reduction in the intensity of tillage, and retention of plant residues. This type of tillage carries different types of tillage within itself. Those would be the following: No-till ( crops are planted directly into the residue soil from the previous year harvest and the residue is not tilled at all), Strip-till (tilled only in narrow strips leaving the rest of the field unstrapped, Ridge-till (this process involves planting row crops on permanent ridges about 4-6 inches high. The previous crop 's residue is cleared completely off ridge-tops into adjacent furrows to make way for the new crop being planted on ridges. Here it is essential to maintain ridges and it
It has caused climate changes, global water withdrawals (70%), deforestation, and has even affected our atmosphere! We have cleared and altered lands to be able to grow more crops due to the fact that every day the number of people that need to be fed increases. Agriculture is not an option or a luxury; it is a necessity…even if it is slowly destroying our world. A great portion of our world is used for agricultural purposes. To be more specific, 40% of earths land surface is devoted to agriculture. For example: there is about 16 million square kilometers of croplands which is what we use to grow crops such as soy beans, rice, etc. There is also about 30 million square kilometers of land (about the size of Africa) which is where animals live. Farmers and industries have taken over the best lands leaving not much land left to expand towards. As Jonathan Foley stated in his video “The other inconvenient truth”, “Were using a planets worth of land”. The need for agriculture will not decrease or go away as the years advance, on the contrary it will continue to increase and we’ll eventually have to double or maybe even triple agricultural production. This is because our population is growing at a rate of about 75 million people per year. There have been different options given as “solutions” to our problem (doubling agriculture while not destroying …show more content…
There have also been other solutions offered such as precision agriculture, new crop varieties, drip irrigation, and of course better tillage practices. I believe that the best solution out of these is finding better tillage practices. There are many different types of tillage practices such as reduced-till, Conventional-till or intensive-till, and conservation tillage. Conservation tillage as stated by the OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms is a tillage system that creates a suitable soil environment for growing a crop and that conserves soil, water and energy resources mainly through the reduction in the intensity of tillage, and retention of plant residues. This type of tillage carries different types of tillage within itself. Those would be the following: No-till ( crops are planted directly into the residue soil from the previous year harvest and the residue is not tilled at all), Strip-till (tilled only in narrow strips leaving the rest of the field unstrapped, Ridge-till (this process involves planting row crops on permanent ridges about 4-6 inches high. The previous crop 's residue is cleared completely off ridge-tops into adjacent furrows to make way for the new crop being planted on ridges. Here it is essential to maintain ridges and it