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Environmental Effects of Organic vs. Industrial Agriculture

Topics: Agriculture, Organic food, Organic farming Pages: 2 (692 words) Published: March 4, 2012
Agriculture is one of the most crucial necessities all around the world. The amount of food grown and sold affects the resources that are used in production. To sustain life you need food but most people are blinded to what actually happens in all the stages of growth. With technology advancing the way it is it has become hard to trust your food and its purity and cleanliness. People don’t get deep into where all their food comes from. It starts from the farms. Depending on what type of farm you visit, you will see different things. Most farms are using fertilizer or other additives in their agriculture but there are also farms that are completely natural and organic. Depending on your beliefs, you may think organic is better than industrial and vise versa. Each has its own pros and cons. The use of organic practices in food and livestock has a positive long term effect on the earth and its environment.

In the United States we have about 313,000,000 people (Census). To effectively feed all the people, shortcuts are made with how agriculture is ran. With the shortcuts made there are mistakes that are also made. Pesticides have become a humongous resource in the agriculture community. Pesticides exemplify how to produce in a lazy way. They cause the grounds to get taken off their natural path of growth. The surrounding areas are being altered from pesticides from farms. The applied pesticides are being spread accidently and alter the plants that inhabit those areas. The runoff from the pesticides isn’t always a bad thing. They control weed growth, increase the life in greens. Also there are pesticides made from natural resources. For example, (E)-5-Decenol acetate is a Lepidopteron Pheromone that when released attract the males to the females but get confused because they cant find the females(Pesticides).Pheromones’ are a natural chemical released by insects naturally. The Decenol Acetate doesn’t kill the insects, but divert them from the plants.

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