what are the major goals of industrial agriculture? (choose 2) course hero

What Is Industrial Agriculture?

Industrial agriculture is the large-scale, intensive production of crops and animals, often involving chemical fertilizers on crops or the routine, harmful use of antibiotics in animals (as a way to compensate for filthy conditions, even when the animals are not sick). It may also involve crops that are genetically modified, heavy use of pesticides, and other practices that deplete the land, mistreat animals, and increase various forms of pollution. In recent decades, consolidation in the industry has intensified as agriculture has undergone what is known as “vertical integration,” a transition from small, diverse farms producing a variety of crops and livestock to an industrialized system dominated by big multinational corporations. These corporations reap the benefits while farmers, growers, and their workers see their profits evaporate, even as the health burdens of industrial practices increase.

What is vertical integration in agriculture?

In recent decades, consolidation in the industry has intensified as agriculture has undergone what is known as “vertical integration,” a transition from small, ...

Why is monoculture bad for the soil?

Monoculture also renders the soil prone to rapid erosion, since the practice leaves the soil bare outside of the crop’s growing season. Perhaps more problematically, repeatedly planting the same crop invites pests that prey on a certain plant to wait around the same spot for their favorite food to return.

What are conventional farmers left to do to avoid pests?

What are conventional farmers left to do to avoid pests? Apply pesticides. That’s why monoculture and genetic modification tend to go hand in hand. Planting pesticide-tolerant GMO crops enables farmers to blanket the landscape with chemicals without damaging their corn or soy. (Speaking of corn and soy, many U.S. farmers rotate their fields back and forth between those two crops, leading to a duoculture that’s only slightly less damaging to the soil than a monoculture.)

How do giant farms affect the environment?

Giant farms—whether growing crops or animals—often rely heavily on chemicals and produce waste that pollutes the water and air. As a result, the system we’ve designed to feed the planet also takes a serious toll on its health.

What is a factory farm?

The term “factory farm” is commonly used to refer to large, industrialized facilities raising animals for food, but it isn’t a legal or scientific term. The official name for these facilities is concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

What Is Monoculture?

Monoculture is the planting of a single crop on the same farmland year after year, a practice that is extremely bad for soil health. Planting the same crop over and over again depletes soil nutrients, which often leads farmers to apply large amounts of synthetic fertilizers—something that further degrades soil health in the long run. Monoculture also renders the soil prone to rapid erosion, since the practice leaves the soil bare outside of the crop’s growing season. Perhaps more problematically, repeatedly planting the same crop invites pests that prey on a certain plant to wait around the same spot for their favorite food to return.

What were the most important things about farming in the early 1900s?

In the early 1900s, more than half of Americans were either farmers or lived in rural communities. 1 Most U.S. farms were diversified, meaning they produced a variety of crops and animal species together on the same farm, in complementary ways. 2 Farmers were skilled in a wide range of trades and had autonomy over how to manage their crops and animals. Animals were typically raised with access to the outdoors. Most of the work on the farm was done by human or animal labor.

When a small number of companies have a large market share of an industry, the market for that industry is said?

When a small number of companies have a large market share of an industry, the market for that industry is said to be concentrated. Markets become more concentrated when companies take over, or merge with, their competitors.

How much grain can a mechanized thresher process?

Mechanization brought tremendous gains in efficiency. By hand, a person can thresh roughly 15 to 40 kg of grain per hour, usually by beating the harvested crop against a hard surface to shake the grain loose from the inedible chaff that surrounds it. In the same amount of time, a mechanized thresher can process 450 to 600 kg of rice, sorghum, or beans, or 1,500 to 2,000 kg of corn. 8

How does a combine harvester work?

The combine harvester performs two processes at once: cutting grain (reaping) and removing it from the inedible part (threshing). Mechanization in agriculture greatly reduced the need for human and animal labor. From 1950 to 2000, production on U.S. farms more than doubled with less than a third of the labor costs. 9.

What were the main crops that were produced by diversified farms?

Diversified farms gave way to genetically uniform monocultures—fields planted with just one crop species at a time, such as corn, wheat, or soy, over a very large area. Meat, milk, and egg production became largely separated from crop production and involved facilities that housed a single breed of animal, during a particular period of its lifespan, for a single purpose (e.g., breeding, feeding, or slaughter). Farmers, once skilled in a breadth of trades, fell into more specialized roles.

What is a specialized farmer?

Specialized farmers, by contrast, can focus all their knowledge, skills, and equipment on one or two enterprises, such as growing corn and soy, or fattening beef cattle. Over the course of industrialization, specialization was applied to nearly all facets of food production. Diversified farms gave way to genetically uniform monocultures—fields ...

How does specialization help farmers?

Specialization aims to increase efficiency by narrowing the range of tasks and roles involved in production. A diversified farmer, for example, might need to manage and care for many different vegetable crops, a composting operation, a flock of egg-laying hens, a sow, and her litter of piglets. Specialized farmers, by contrast, can focus all their knowledge, skills, and equipment on one or two enterprises, such as growing corn and soy, or fattening beef cattle. Over the course of industrialization, specialization was applied to nearly all facets of food production.

How have individuals and groups responded to industrial agriculture?

Individuals and groups have responded to industrial agriculture by using their purchasing power to support sources of locally grown food. One manifestation is ‘community-supported agriculture’ (CSA), in which individuals purchase ‘shares’ in a particular farm's annual crop.

What is industrial agriculture?

Industrial agriculture is all about controlling nature, curating the land for human use, and choosing which plants are valuable. Although much of biodiversity loss is a secondary result of farming techniques (think: habitat loss or unintended chemical runoff), plants are often eradicated on purpose (think: weeds).

What are some organizations that bring healthy food to low income communities?

Local organizations such as the Food Project (Lincoln, Mass.) and Isles (Trenton, N.J.) bring healthy, locally grown food into low-income communities by training and engaging young people in techniques of sustainable agriculture.

How are food systems dependent on fossil fuels?

Industrial agriculture and food systems are largely dependent on fossil fuels for the production of food by way of machinery and mechanization, agrichemicals, transportation, food processing, food packaging, assimilating waste, etc . (Shiva et al., 2017; Neff et al., 2011 ). In the United States, fossil fuel and the energy used by the food system is substantial ( Canning et al., 2017 ). The energy used for food accounted for over half of the total increased energy use in the United States between 1997 and 2002 ( Canning et al., 2017 ). In an era where oil reserves will dip and extracting new resources is not only expensive but also has a detrimental impact on the natural environment, reducing energy use by food systems is imperative ( Neff et al., 2011 ).

What book did Wendell Berry write?

Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America (1978), Wes Jackson's New Roots of Agriculture (1980), and two reports from the National Academy of Science's Alternative Agriculture (1989) and Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century (2010) offered an ecological and social critique of industrial agriculture and showed that viable alternative models already existed.

How does industrial agriculture affect the environment?

Side effects of industrial agriculture include soil erosion, water pollution from inorganic fertilizer and pesticides, simplification of ecosystems, consolidation of small farms into large ones, and shipment of food over long distances requiring both energy and time. Individuals and groups have responded to industrial agriculture by using their purchasing power to support sources of locally grown food. One manifestation is ‘community-supported agriculture’ (CSA), in which individuals purchase ‘shares’ in a particular farm's annual crop. Each week during the growing season, each shareholder is entitled to a basket of produce from the CSA farm they support. Groups like the Food Trust (Philadelphia, Pa.) have pioneered CSAs and other innovations include local farmers' markets, urban community gardens and farms, schoolyard gardens, and farm-to-school and farm-to-campus programs that provide students with locally grown food while offering local farms a reliable market for their crops. Despite the great wealth of the United States, hunger and malnutrition remain widespread. Groups such as the National Food Security Coalition (Portland, Ore.) are developing food security coalitions and food policy councils around the country, aiming to make sure everyone has access to reasonably priced local food, particularly in areas considered, ‘food deserts’ where there are few or no grocery stores. Local organizations such as the Food Project (Lincoln, Mass.) and Isles (Trenton, N.J.) bring healthy, locally grown food into low-income communities by training and engaging young people in techniques of sustainable agriculture. Around the country, other groups such as Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (Athens, Ohio) are providing commercial-scale kitchens and business incubators to spur locally based food businesses that rely on locally grown food.

What is the goal of organic farming?

As time passed, the organic farming movement shifted into a ‘sustainable agriculture’ movement with three goals: farming practices compatible with natural systems, using organic fertilizers and few or no chemical pesticides; achieving food security, emphasizing locally grown foods; and maintaining rural economies that could sustain, and be sustained by, relatively small-scale farms.

What is the goal of sustainable agriculture?

For them, the goal is not only to minimize environmental degradation, but to improve the land and the health of the broader ecosystem [source: Gerber].

When did sustainable agriculture start?

Although practiced by conscientious and prosperous farmers since day one, the term sustainable agriculture didn't come into widespread use until the 1980s. In the 1990 Farm Bill, Congress proposed a definition of sustainable agriculture as an "integrated system of plant and animal practices" that work toward the following overarching goals: ...

How can farmers improve their soil?

For example, farmers can increase the organic matter content of their soils -- thereby improving soil texture and water-holding capacity -- by plowing in compost each fall. In a diverse and well-planned farm operation, the farm's own cows and horses can provide sufficient manure for composting. Farmers can also mimic nature by planting disease-resistant varieties of crops and using companion plants to attract beneficial insects that ward off invasive pests.

What is organic farming?

It is this goal of following natural processes that has fueled the organic farming movement, a subset of sustainable agriculture. In organic farming, no chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides are applied to the soil or crops and animals are raised in more natural settings, often freely grazing on their natural diet rather than confined to pens and fattened with corn.

What is soil fertility?

Let's use soil fertility as an example: In nature, the soil is fed by the slow decomposition of organic matter in the form of dead plants, dead animals and animal droppings. Natural soils are also home to a broad diversity of plant life that has evolved natural resistance to common diseases and pests.

What is fertile soil?

A naturally fertile soil is also rich with beneficial insects and microbial life that repel pests and cycle nutrients back into the earth. Sustainable agriculture doesn't ask farmers to let their fields run wild, but to simply learn from nature's bag of tricks.

How is industrialized agriculture supported?

Industrialized agriculture is supported by taxpayer subsidies overtly by way of artificially low grain prices and tax breaks. Animal feed, a key element of industrialized agriculture, is made from corn and soybeans that are cheap for feed companies to purchase owing to government subsidies.

How Was Agriculture Industrialized?

Following World War II, as wartime technology was repurposed for civilian use, a belief arose that processing, scientific engineering and other laboratory interventions made products safer, healthier, more nutritious and more trustworthy than those that were “natural.” For Americans who lived through the Great Depression or had experienced hunger at other times — or witnessed its devastating effects when fighting abroad — industrializing food production seemed not only like a good idea but critical for feeding a growing population.

How did farming change?

As farms and fields were consolidating and expanding, farming methods changed too, moving towards specialization, mechanization and ever-increasing reliance on fossil fuels. Tractors and other equipment got bigger; chemical fertilizers revolutionized crop yields; improved irrigation forced dry areas into production; animals were moved into controlled confinement; and seed genes began to be spliced.

What is agricultural dumping?

Agricultural “dumping” – forcing poor countries to buy cheaply produced US grains at less than the cost of production – has destroyed farm economies around the world, including Latin America, leading to increased immigration as former farmers come to the US in search of work. 78.

Why are sustainable farms important?

Public Health. Without the use of hazardous chemical pesticides, sustainable farms are much safer and healthier for their farmers, workers and surrounding communities, and the food they produce is free of chemical residues.

How can we support sustainable agriculture?

At the county, state, federal and institutional level, you can support increased investment in sustainable agriculture research, as well as education for beginning and transitioning farmers. Throughout farm country, there are corn and soybean farmers who would prefer to be growing food more directly for people, but do who not have the knowledge, market, equipment or wherewithal to make a change. Education and incentive programs for these farmers can help.

How can agriculture help farmers?

A different kind of federal agriculture policy could help farmers and taxpayers, and curb many of the worst impacts of industrialization. A policy based on supply management, which creates a grain reserve (a common sense protection against low yield years) and a floor price for farmers, would not incentivize fencerow-to-fencerow planting, making it easier for farmers to take marginal lands (land not worth farming because it would not make enough money) out of production. A 2011 analysis by Dr. Darryl Ray at the University of Tennessee showed that if a farmer-owned reserve had been in place between 1996 and 2010, rather than the patchwork subsidy system, taxpayers would have saved more than $96 billion. The Food from Family Farms Act by the National Family Farm Coalition, is one example of a farm bill proposal to reinstate reserves and fair prices, along with ecologically sustainable planting and a more secure disaster program.