Intensive Farming Practices: Biodiversity & Ethics

Ensuring Food Supply

• Intensifying food production boosts efficiency using limited land and resources.
• Modern tech significantly increases food supply.
• Agricultural machinery replaces humans, boosting farming efficiency across larger areas.
• Chemical fertilizers enhance soil nutrients, leading to larger plant growth and more fruit.
• Insecticides and herbicides eliminate unwanted insects and weeds, minimizing plant damage.
• Selective breeding produces high-yield animal and crop breeds.

Intensive Livestock Farming

• Developed countries often keep large livestock numbers crowded into small areas.
• Livestock receives high-energy foods, antibiotics as a preventative measure, and artificially warm temperatures.
• Intensive farming requires less land and allows year-round food production in controlled environments.
• It also lowers production costs, resulting in cheaper food that requires less manual labor.
• Intensive farming tends to use herbicides which may result in eutrophication and pesticides which can cause negative effects on the food chain.
• Ethical concerns arise from cruel treatment of animals on intensive farms.
• Natural habitats may be destroyed to maximize land available for agriculture.
• Reduction in biodiversity, overgrazing, and increased methane production are all ecological issues with intensive farming.

Monocultures Explained

• Monoculture farming involves growing only one crop type on a specific land area.
• Monocultures don't naturally occur in ecosystems, where diverse plants support various animals.
• Biodiversity decreases in monocultures.
• Increased pest populations occur because monocultures provide an ample food supply for specific pests.
• Insecticide use to control pests leads to killing harmless insects and pollution of the water and soil.
• The pests eventually build a resistance to the insecticides.
• Palm oil production has increased rapidly over the last 30 years.

The Importance of Biodiversity

• Biodiversity is the variety of species in a specific area.
• Human activities generally decrease biodiversity, yet high biodiversity is needed for ecosystems to be stable.
• Habitat destruction significantly pushes biodiversity downwards
• The increase in human population destroys habitats, from rainforest to woodland to marine environments.
• Habitat destruction happens when humans make space for economic opportunities or pollution purposes, which reduces biodiversity.
• Food chains and webs are interrupted which causes species to die as their prey disappears.

Reasons for Habitat Destruction

• Clearing land to make space for crops, livestock, and homes as population increases.
• Forests are cleared (deforestation) to extract natural resources like wood, stone, and metals.
• Trees are cut destroying forest habitats.
• Extracting resources like mining requires clearing a large amount of land.
• Pollution from human activities pollutes marine habitats.
• Oil spills and waste pollute oceans and kill off sea life.
• Eutrophication contaminates water ways from fertilizers which causes a decreased level of biodiversity.
• Deforestation involves clearing trees, and if they are not replaced, it is not a sustainable practice.
• Trees are cleared for the building of new structures, grazing land for cattle, and for monoculture planting such as palm oil.

Deforestation Effects

• Extinction/loss of biodiversity occurs, especially in tropical rainforests, due to habitat destruction, causing plant and animal species to become extinct.
• Soil erosion occurs because roots help stabilise the soil.
• Nutrients and minerals are washed away into rivers and lakes through rain (leaching).
• The loss of the soil makes it difficult for trees to regrow, even if it is not cultivated for crops or cattle.
• Flooding is caused by the topsoil being washed away from the land.
• The level of carbon dioxide increases.
• Decreased trees mean less carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere.
• Burning the trees increase carbon dioxide levels, contributing to global warming.

Water Pollution

• Human actions contribute to land, water, and air pollution.
• Pollution originate from industries, manufacturing, waste, discarded rubbish, forming practices, nuclear fall-out, and untreated sewage.

Pollutants, Sources, and Effects

• Untreated sewage lacks treatment plants in inhabited areas, commonly running into streams or rivers.
• Chemical waste containing heavy metals from factories pollutes rivers and oceans, harming all species.
• Discarded rubbish, majorly plastic, contaminates landfills and marine ecosystmes.
• Plastic can be broken down into smaller peices, especially in the ocean.
• Fertilizers run off from agricultural land, with high concentrations causing algal blooms that deplete oxygen; aquatic organisms die as a result.
• Insecticides and herbicides sprayed on crops leads to loss of biodiversity.
• Nuclear fallout releases radioactive particles that can remain for a long time leading to increased cancer risks.
• Methane, from cattle, rice fields, and landfills, is a greenhouse gas contributing to climate change.
• Carbon Dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels contribute to climate change.

Eutrophication

• Increased levels of algae and plant growth occur when runoff fertilizer contaminates water.
• Algal blooms block the sunlight, so plants on the the bottom start to die, like the algae.
• As dying happens, decomposing bacteria use up the dissolved oxygen, and aquatic organisms start to die because they are unable to breathe.

Other Pollution

• Plastics negatively impact both land and water habitats due to their non-biodegradability.
• In marine life, marine animals try to eat plastic which can lead to injures and death.
• The decaying plastic releases toxins that affect marine organisms and enters the the food chain.
• Disposing on the land harms the soil because it remains there, which stops the land from being used to graze animals.
• Methane and carbon dioxide gasses insulate the Earth and contribute to the global temperature increase.

Sustainability

• Food, water, wood and other Earth resources are sustainable.
• A sustainable resource is produced at the same rate as it is removed so it dosen't run out.
• Fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, are non-renewable.
• Fossil fuels must be conserved because, once used, they cannot be replaced.
• Fossil fuels are used as an energy source, and are raw materials, like plastics.
• Products made from paper, plastic glass or metal can be reused to reduce waste, amounts of raw materials, and energy.
• Resources like forests and fish stocks can be maintained so that they will never run out.
• Sustainable development means providing for the rising population without harming the environment.
• To manage sustainable resources, we must balance conflicting demands such as the local environment, human needs, and future populations.

Sustaining Forests

• Forests produce paper products and timber.
• World paper is produced from forests which replant similar trees when mature, ensuring that trees will be available.
• Tropical hardwoods can be used for furniture, even though they take a long time to grow.
• Schemes have been introduced to monitor logging companies Educating people is important to ensure that logging companies are aware of sustainable practices.
• Managing fish stocks sustainably includes controlling the amount of fish caught each year, controlling the size of the fish caught, and controlling the time of year they are caught.
• It is important to restock so there is a higher chance of them surviving.

Endangered Species

• An endangered species is at risk of extinction.
• This occurs due to hunting, climate change, pollution, loss of habitat, and introduction of non-native species.
• Conservation helps and can include education programmes, captive breeding programmes, legal protection, and seed banks.
• With low genetic variation, random environmental changes may rapidly cause extinction.
• Conservation is for moral, cultural and scientific reasons.

Reasons for Conservation

• It is important for maintaining or increasing biodiversity, reducing extinction, assisting in the protection of ecosystems, and nutrient cycling.
• Artifical insemination helps produce offspring without the need for conventional mating.
• In vitro fertilization helps allows gametes with known alleles to be used in ensuring the next generation remains biodiverse.

Risk to Speices

• A species loses genetic variation as population size decreases.
• The species becomes more susceptible to environmental change and is less resilient.
• The rate of extinction gets higher.