Laura Reddig
Professor Michelle MacFarlane
AG 198
7 October, 2015
Midterm
1. Alternative crops are crucial to changing the unhealthy dieting habits of modern culture as the reliance on calorie rich crops rise. The world is shifting its agricultural focus to crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans while crops like sweet potato, cassava and yam are declining in numbers (Parker, 2014). With such a limited number of crops being relied on to provide most dietary nutrition, those crops have to be specifically bred and genetically modified to keep up with the nutritional demand. Alternative crops add diversity in the world’s food supply so a few select crops are not the only ones relied on for a majority of the food demand. They also increase genetic …show more content…
Around the world, “Wheat is a major staple in 98 percent of countries and rice in 91 percent; soybean … to 74 percent of countries” (Parker, 2014). With such a high dependence on those three crops, if a disease eliminated even one, the effects could be catastrophic. If alternative crops became a larger part of the world’s food supply, not only would there be a better diversity of nutrients, but impact from disease would be far less than if just a few staple foods were relied on. 2. There are many advantages and disadvantages to an agrarian society. In this type of society, there is always a guarantee of access to food at locations like grocery stores and restaurants. As a hunter-gatherer, there is no guarantee that one will find any edible plants to eat or animals to hunt. Agriculture can also sustain a much larger communities than hunting and gathering can. Since a large mass of land is used exclusively for food production and it taken to where it is needed, people are able to live away from the food resources. …show more content…
Nitrogen fixing organisms are a very important piece of the nitrogen fixing process and most have a symbiotic relationship with legumes. Legume roots grow with nodules, and these nodules house the nitrogen fixing organisms known as rhizobium. These organisms are necessary for taking the atmospheric nitrogen and processing it into ammonia and other compounds in the soil. The nitrogenous compounds are then taken up by the plants (Bernhard, 2010). Legumes can be a natural solution to adding nitrogen to the soil in agriculture. One study done in Australian found that the nitrogen added to the soil by soybean when rotated with sugarcane “lowered [nitrogen] fertilizer requirement…necessary to maintain sugarcane yield” (Parker, 2010). This study shows how agriculture can benefit when more natural approaches are taken and how much of an impact legumes may have on nitrogen levels in the
Professor Michelle MacFarlane
AG 198
7 October, 2015
Midterm
1. Alternative crops are crucial to changing the unhealthy dieting habits of modern culture as the reliance on calorie rich crops rise. The world is shifting its agricultural focus to crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans while crops like sweet potato, cassava and yam are declining in numbers (Parker, 2014). With such a limited number of crops being relied on to provide most dietary nutrition, those crops have to be specifically bred and genetically modified to keep up with the nutritional demand. Alternative crops add diversity in the world’s food supply so a few select crops are not the only ones relied on for a majority of the food demand. They also increase genetic …show more content…
Around the world, “Wheat is a major staple in 98 percent of countries and rice in 91 percent; soybean … to 74 percent of countries” (Parker, 2014). With such a high dependence on those three crops, if a disease eliminated even one, the effects could be catastrophic. If alternative crops became a larger part of the world’s food supply, not only would there be a better diversity of nutrients, but impact from disease would be far less than if just a few staple foods were relied on. 2. There are many advantages and disadvantages to an agrarian society. In this type of society, there is always a guarantee of access to food at locations like grocery stores and restaurants. As a hunter-gatherer, there is no guarantee that one will find any edible plants to eat or animals to hunt. Agriculture can also sustain a much larger communities than hunting and gathering can. Since a large mass of land is used exclusively for food production and it taken to where it is needed, people are able to live away from the food resources. …show more content…
Nitrogen fixing organisms are a very important piece of the nitrogen fixing process and most have a symbiotic relationship with legumes. Legume roots grow with nodules, and these nodules house the nitrogen fixing organisms known as rhizobium. These organisms are necessary for taking the atmospheric nitrogen and processing it into ammonia and other compounds in the soil. The nitrogenous compounds are then taken up by the plants (Bernhard, 2010). Legumes can be a natural solution to adding nitrogen to the soil in agriculture. One study done in Australian found that the nitrogen added to the soil by soybean when rotated with sugarcane “lowered [nitrogen] fertilizer requirement…necessary to maintain sugarcane yield” (Parker, 2010). This study shows how agriculture can benefit when more natural approaches are taken and how much of an impact legumes may have on nitrogen levels in the