Environmental degradation hampers food production. Sestif,
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before food production even begins, natural habitats and ecosystems are destroyed to clear land that will be used for agriculture. Habitat loss is one of the leading causes of population declines among wildlife species, eventually leading to extinction in many cases. When trees are cut down to make space for farmland, local species who survive must relocate to find new homes. This type of deforestation is known as ‘land-use change’, and is a huge contributor to climate change, as forests are major carbon sinks that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Use of Chemicals for Agriculture
Once the land has been cleared, it must be primed to grow large amounts of food. This is done using heavy applications of artificial herbicides and fertilizers. The herbicides are intended to prevent the growth of unwanted plants that would ‘steal’ nutrients from the crop, and the fertilizers increase the nutrients available in the soil so that the crop’s yield is maximized. Unfertile soils may require even larger amounts of fertilizers to meet the demand for agricultural production. Once planted, fertilizers, herbicides, and artificial pesticides are all used throughout the growing process to help promote plant growth (with fertilizer), while simultaneously preventing competition from other plants, and degradation from crop-eating pests.
The exorbitant use of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides is unsustainable and environmentally damaging for two reasons. First and foremost, they are chemicals that can be toxic when organisms are exposed to high concentrations. While the methods by which these chemicals are applied to crops prevent them from accumulating on the food in harmful concentrations, they are difficult for our bodies to process and consuming large amounts of food treated in this manner could lead to health impacts through bio-accumulation.
Application of these chemicals onto crops also causes them to be released into the atmosphere as harmful air pollutants. Agricultural run-off from heavy rains removes chemicals from the site of food production and transports them to other locations, polluting soils, waterways, and other ecosystems. When natural systems are polluted in this way, the chemicals are absorbed into the tissues of simple organisms, like algae. These simple organisms are eaten by larger animals further up the food chain; and instead of being destroyed, the chemicals accumulate in the bodies of the larger animals. Through this process, known as ‘bio-accumulation’, chemicals released into natural ecosystems are able to grow to potentially toxic concentrations. At this point they damage the health of the ecosystem by reducing fertility, causing irreparable genetic damage, or even killing important populations.
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