Industrial
agriculture
The links between industrial agriculture and climate change are
twofold. On the one hand, industrially produced food systems are
energy-intensive and fossil-fuel based, and thus contribute significantly to
climate change. On the other hand, the crops grown in the genetically
homogeneous monocultures that are typical of chemical farming are not resilient
to the climate extremes that are becoming more frequent and more violent.
Industrial agriculture originated in the 1960s when petrochemical
companies introduced new methods of intense chemical farming. For the farmers
the immediate effect was a spectacular improvement in agricultural production,
and the new era was hailed as the "Green Revolution." But a few
decades later, the dark side of chemical agriculture became painfully evident.
It is well known today that the Green Revolution has helped
neither farmers, nor the land, nor the consumers. The massive use of chemical
fertilizers and pesticides changed the whole fabric of agriculture and farming,
as the agrochemical industry persuaded farmers that they could make more money
by planting large fields with a single highly profitable crop and by
controlling weeds and pests with chemicals. This practice of single-crop
monoculture entailed high risks of large acreages being destroyed by a single
pest, and it also seriously affected the health of farm workers and people
living in agricultural areas.
With the new chemicals, farming became mechanized and
energy-intensive, favoring large corporate farmers with sufficient capital, and
forcing most of the traditional single-family farmers to abandon their land.
All over the world, large numbers of people left rural areas and joined the
masses of urban unemployed as victims of the Green Revolution.
The long-term effects of excessive chemical farming have been
disastrous for the health of the soil and for human health, for our social
relations, and for the natural environment. As the same crops were planted and
fertilized synthetically year after year, the balance of the ecological
processes in the soil was disrupted; the amount of organic matter diminished,
and with it the soil’s ability to retain moisture. The resulting changes in
soil texture entailed a multitude of interrelated harmful consequences — loss
of humus, dry and sterile soil, wind and water erosion, and so on.
The ecological imbalance caused by monocultures and excessive
use of chemicals also resulted in enormous increases in pests and crop
diseases, which farmers countered by spraying ever-larger doses of pesticides
in vicious cycles of depletion and destruction. The hazards for human health
increased accordingly as more and more toxic chemicals seeped through the soil,
contaminated the water table, and showed up in our food.
In recent years, the disastrous effects of climate change have
revealed another set of severe limitations of industrial agriculture. As Miguel
Altieri and his colleagues at SOCLA (the Sociedad Cientifica
Latinoamericana de Agroecologia) point out in a recent report, the Green
Revolution was launched under the assumptions that abundant water and cheap
energy from fossil fuels would always be available, and that the climate would
be stable. None of these assumptions are valid today. The key ingredients of
industrial agriculture — agrochemicals, as well as fuel-based mechanization and
irrigation — are derived entirely from dwindling and ever more expensive fossil
fuels; water tables are falling; and increasingly frequent and violent climate
catastrophes wreak havoc with the genetically homogeneous monocultures that now
cover 80 percent of global arable land. Moreover, the practices of industrial
agriculture contribute about 25 to 30 percent to global greenhouse gas
emissions, further accelerating climate change.
Our fossil-fuel based industrial agriculture contributes to
greenhouse-gas emissions in several distinct ways: directly through the fuel
burnt by agricultural machinery, during food processing, and by transporting
the average ounce of food over a thousand miles "from the farm to the
table"; indirectly in the manufacture of its synthetic inputs, e.g. of
nitrogen fertilizer from nitrogen and natural gas; and finally by breaking down
the organic matter in the soil into carbon dioxide (during large-scale tillage
and as a consequence of excessive synthetic inputs), which is released into the
atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. In addition, massive amounts of methane (a
greenhouse gas many times more potent than CO2) are released during large-scale
industrial cattle ranching.
The degrading of healthy organic soil by chemical fertilizers
and pesticides increases the soil's vulnerability to drought by reducing its
capacity to capture water and keep it available for crops. A further
devastating effect of the over-fertilization that is typical of current
chemical farming practices is the nutritional overload in our waterways, caused
by runoffs of agricultural nitrates and phosphates, which lead to oxygen
depletion in rivers and to so-called "dead zones" in the oceans,
which are no longer inhabitable by most aquatic life.
From a systemic point of view, it is evident that a system of
agriculture that is highly centralized, energy-intensive, excessively chemical,
and totally dependent on fossil fuels; a system, moreover, that creates serious
health hazards for farm workers and consumers, and is unable to cope with
increasing climate disasters; cannot be sustained in the long run.
DIFFERENT
CLIMATES IN THE WORLD
1)Tropics
2) Temperate
3) Tundra
4) Desert
WATER
Soil
(i) The unconsolidated mineral or organic material
on the immediate surface of the Earth that serves as a natural medium for the
growth of land plants.
(ii) The unconsolidated mineral or organic matter on the
surface of the Earth that has been subjected to and shows effects of genetic
and environmental factors of: climate (including water and temperature
effects), and macro- microorganisms, conditioned by relief, acting on parent
material over a period of time.
A product-soil differs from the material from which it is
derived in many physical, chemical, biological, and morphological properties
and characteristics.
HUMAN
RESOURCES
Human
Resource Development is an important factor in capacity building and improving
the overall efficiency of functionaries involved in implementation, monitoring,
evaluation, research and extension programmes. Training is a major component of
Human Resource Development. Systematic training, planning, management and its
implementation by making best utilization of resources available within the
country helps in bringing about desirable changes in knowledge and upgrade
skills of extension functionaries associated with the process of agriculture
development. The training infrastructure has been created to meet out the
training requirements of all levels of extension functionaries, farm youth and
farmwomen. Looking into the importance of training in capacity building of
extension experts and farmers, this scheme is selected for the strengthening of
extension services and dissemination of agricultural technology to the farming
community.
IMPACT OF
CLIMATE CHANGE
The greenhouse effect
The earth is surrounded by an atmosphere through which solar
radiation is received. The atmosphere is not static but contains air, in
constant motion, being heated, cooled and moved, water being added and removed
along with smoke and dust. Only a tiny proportion of the sun's energy
reaches earth and some of this is reflected back into space (from clouds etc.).
When the radiant energy reaches the land surface, most of it is absorbed, being
used to heat the earth, evaporate water and to power photosynthetic processes.
The earth also radiates energy but, because it is less hot than
the sun, this is of a longer wavelength and is absorbed by the atmosphere. The
Earths atmosphere, thus acts like the glass of a green house, hence the
'greenhouse effect'.
Global warming
The term
used to describe a gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth's
atmosphere and its oceans, a change that is believed to be permanently changing
the Earth's climate.
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