At the making of this tutorial, nearly half of our planet is used for agriculture. There are many negative environmental impacts that result from agricultural practices. These include:
As more land gets transformed for agricultural use, we are changing natural ecosystems into agroecosystems. Agroecosystems tend to have a low genetic diversity, low species diversity, and low habitat diversity. All three are problematic for a stable, healthy ecosystem.
Agroecosystems tend to have low diversity because they are designed to control a small number of species in a given area for human use, whereas natural ecosystems allow for a larger diversity of species to have progression and succession over time.
In order to have the highest amount of efficiency and control, most agriculture tends to practice monoculture, which is the cultivation of a single crop, like the corn crop shown below.
Monoculture can cause a number of issues:
Luckily, there are ways to mitigate and transform these negative environmental impacts. Organizations and government institutions can provide information on methods, and they can subsidize technologies to mitigate impacts.
Three primary methods of transforming negative impacts are:
Organic agriculture seeks to avoid synthetic compounds, instead using more natural sources and methodologies, such as crop rotation, composting, and natural pesticides and fertilizers. In this photo, an organic cattle farm in Ohio is pasture-raising their cows, instead of giving them processed feed.
Sustainable agriculture's methods seek to prevent negative impacts through practices — like composting and no-till farming — that take part in the natural cycles around them, instead of degrading resources. For example, this farm below composts their waste and re-uses it to grow food instead of using chemical fertilizers.
Regenerative agriculture's main goal is to improve the surrounding ecosystems' resources. This is primarily done by creating and replenishing soils and their nutrients. In the photo below, you can see topsoil being slowly created with leaves and other organic materials.
Source: Adapted from Sophia instructor Jensen Morgan, IMAGE OF GMO CORN CC HTTP://BIT.LY/1UKDD3S IMAGE OF CATTLE CC HTTP://BIT.LY/16GQWWS IMAGE OF SUSTAINABLE FARMING CC HTTP://BIT.LY/1DL7DCR IMAGE OF COMPOST PD HTTP://BIT.LY/1ZKSO4N