Give an account of environmental effects of modern agriculture.
Answers
Agriculture contributes to a number larger of environmental issues that cause environmental degradation including: climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, dead zones, genetic engineering, irrigation problems, pollutants, soil degradation, and waste.
Answer:
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Explanation:
Modern agriculture is an evolving approach to agricultural innovations and farming practices that help farmers increase efficiency and reduce the number of natural resources like water, land, and energy necessary to meet the world’s food, fuel, and fiber needs. The agribusiness, intensive farming, organic farming, and sustainable agriculture are other names of modern agriculture.
It also leads to environmental problems because it is based on high input–high output technique using hybrid seeds of high-yielding variety and abundant irrigation water, fertilizers, and pesticides. The impacts of modern agriculture on the Environment are discussed below:
Soil Erosion
The top fertile soil of the farmland is removed due to the excessive water supply. This leads to the loss of nutrient-rich soil that hampered productivity.
Contamination of groundwater
The groundwater is one of the important sources of water for irrigation. From agricultural fields, nitrogenous fertilizers leach into the soil and finally contaminate groundwater.
Water-logging and salinity
The salinity of the soil is one of the reasons of low productivity just because of the improper management of farm drainage. In this situation, the roots of plants do not get enough air to respiration then it leads to low crop yield as well as low mechanical strength.
Eutrophication
It refers to the addition of artificial or non-artificial substances such as nitrates and phosphate, through fertilizers or sewage, to a freshwater system. It leads to an increase in the primary productivity of the water body or the 'bloom' of phytoplankton.
Excessive use of Pesticide
There are many pesticides that are used for destroying pests and boosting crop production. Earlier arsenic, sulfur, lead, and mercury was used to kill pests. For Example- Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane (DDT) content pesticides were used, but unfortunately, it also targeted the beneficial pests.