While global warming is the centerpiece of all environmental problems, there is an even bigger conundrum than climate change: crisis in global land use. Agriculture is integral to human life on earth. The use of land is directly linked to the success of the human race.
Unfortunately, the human race demands more and more from global agricultural systems, pushing them to their very limits. It is said that ‘the massive environmental impacts of our agricultural practices rival the impacts of climate change.’ The solution is in human hands. ‘Without a highly efficient, productive, and resilient agricultural system, our society would collapse almost overnight.’
Ballooning populations that add more than 70 million people to the world every year, increase in meat and dairy consumption, ‘rising energy prices, and increasing needs for bioenergy sources’ are ways that push the world’s resources to the edge of limits. There is ‘tremendous pressure on the world’s resources’ that the demands necessitate doubling or tripling agricultural production of the planet in the next 30 to 40 years. All these will overwhelm the land with usage.
The global crisis in land use and agriculture that ‘could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization’ are proven by these manifestations:
Ecosystem degradation caused by humans having ‘cleared or converted more than 35 percent of the earth’s ice-free land surface for agriculture,’ and that ‘the area used for agriculture is nearly 60 times larger than the area of all of the world’s cities and suburbs.’
’The single biggest use of water, by far, on the globe is irrigation’ for agriculture that uses water from streams, rivers, lakes and aquifers – in the staggering amount of 70 percent of 4,000 cubic kilometers of water per year. This has led to the decline in the supply of freshwater.
Also upsetting the chemistry of the planet are all the agricultural fertilizers and chemicals that have been inputted into the soil or risen to the atmosphere as gas. These have led to widespread pollution as caused by agriculture. ‘The fertilizer runoff from farmlands also affects another crucial source of food: coastal fishing grounds.’
Via environment360
