The Many Roads to Idaho Agriculture When we imagine hazards to the environment, we tend to imagine pollution or litter, not dinner. However, in reality, our need for food poses one of the largest dangers to our planet. In the world we live today, the population is rapidly increasing and will soon reach nine billion people. This means that the land for cultivating food is quickly diminishing. In order to save land, money, and lives, we all need to be willing to make a change. According to population, the United States is the third largest country in the world. There are approximately three hundred and thirty million people that live within our country’s borders. With this large of a population, it is difficult to cultivate enough food for everyone. Idaho plays a significant role in the production of crops and agriculture products. Every year, Idaho farmers and producers account for a various set of crops, seeds, dairy products, cattle, and other livestock. According to Idaho Commerce, “If Idahoans ate everything we produced, we would each have to consume 219 slices of bread, 44 potatoes, 40 glasses of milk, an 8-ounce steak, 2 onions, and 2 cups of beans EVERY DAY!” Although we produce an abundant source of food and other products, this still isn’t …show more content…
Have you ever driven down the road and noticed that there was more water on the road than in the farmer’s field? If you have, then you know that our natural resources can be used more efficiently. Many farmers have gotten smarter about replacing inefficient irrigation but there is still excess waste that can be reduced. Producers should also be applying their fertilizer at the right time of plant growth so that the runoff of chemicals into nearby waterways is limited. You can personally conserve resources by turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth, taking baths instead of showers, and running your dishwasher after it is
In the video, “America Revealed: Food Machine,” the host, Yul Kwon, investigated the modern American agricultural industry, with an emphasis upon the contrasts between contemporary farming and the American farming of previous generations. At the start of the program, Mr. Kwon discusses the route of a pizza delivery person in New York City, and he describes the origins of the ingredients of the pizza. To do this, the host travels to California’s Central Valley, a region that was once a desert, but is now the breadbasket of the United States. In this valley, thirteen million tomatoes are grown per year as well as fifty percent of the country’s fruits and nuts. Water is the most expensive resource in this region, as it must travel many miles from
Humans are damaging the planet to live comfortably, we must change the way food is distributed worldwide, support local farmers and switch to a healthier diet in order to stop global warming. The current global has been getting better for us humans over the years, from eating bread and eggs 3 times a day in the XV century, now we can eat better than the kings of those times, however the much of the food in not healthy and the global food system still fails in getting food to every individual in the planet and in addition it contributes to the destruction of our world. Ms. Anna Lappe explains how the food system contributes to around 1/3 of the global warming issue in her essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork”, while a group of Plos one explains the issues about the export and import of food growth over the last 50 years in the
...nergy from an acre of Iowa farmland. Unfortunately, for more than fifty years, farm policies is designed to encourage the overproduction of this crop and hardly any other. It simply because the government subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country. While the surgeon general is warning the epidemic of obesity, our government is still signing bills encouraging the river of cheap corn flowing. It is clearly shown that food production in America is partly a mixture of politic, economic and morality.
As small mobile groups of hunter-gatherers adopted a sedentary lifestyle, they mastered both agriculture and animal domestication. These small settled groups quickly evolved into cities and towns that encompassed the entire globe. Today the estimated population of the world is over 6.2 million people.1 As the population has grown, it has had several deleterious effects on the Earth. These include climate changes, the spread of diseases, declining food production, deforestation, and environment pollution (particularly air pollution). As people have become more conscious of these harmful effects, they have begun to devise strategies to combat this problem. Among the suggested responses include a switch to renewable energy, a call for zero population growth, and adopting sustainable agricultural practices.
Today there are roughly 1100 potato farmers left in Idaho- few enough to fit in a high school auditorium,” (Schlosser
We often hear the saying that water is the source of life so how can mankind waste this precious source that God has given us. A fine example was mentioned in the film about India’s new green agricultural system where 30 times more water is been use than the actual amount required. It is really hard to see how these farmers are spitefully wasting water when it is really needed in the neighboring communities. This goes to show that people only do things to benefit themselves not considering the needs of other people. Not only is water being wasted in developing countries but there is also water wastage in developed countries we often take our water sources for granted here in the US such as not turning off the pipes when brushing our teeth or washing our hands and the list goes on. Water conservation is the key to saving our planet because soon it will become extinct to us human beings.
Food production has many challenges to address: CO2 emissions, which are projected to increase by two-thirds in the next 20 years, as the global food production increases so does the number of people going hungry, with the number of urban hungry soaring. The environmental issues are not the only ones to face; politics and economic globalization take also the big part in the food world. These days agriculture and food politics has been going through many changes but mostly under the influence of its consumers; back in the days people wanted as little as safety, variety and low costs of food. Now consumers demanding way more – greater freshness, nutritional value, less synthetic chemicals, smaller carbon footprint and less harm to animals. And that’s the time when urban agriculture emerged quite rapidly delivering locally grown and healthy food. Within the political arena, there are a few still in charge of defending the conventional food industries and commercial farms to retain the upper level. Against the hopes of nutrition activists, farm animal welfare defenders, and organic food promoters, the food and agriculture sector is moving towards greater consolidation and better sustainability. Although in social and local terms, food-growing activists know their role is under attack. Caught two words in the middle, is it possible to satisfy both?
Have you ever looked inside your refrigerator and thought, ”I wonder how all of this food ended up here?”, If you have, you and the rest of America would be surprised at the answer. Many people in the U.S do not know where and how their food is produced, which raises many
In order for us to maintain our lives, we need to consume food to supply nutrient-needs for our bodies. As the global population increased, the demand for food also increased. Increased population led to mass production of foods. However, even with this mass production, in under-developed countries, people are still undernourished. On other hand, in developed and developing countries, people are overfed and suffering from obesity. In addition, the current methods of industrial farming destroy the environment. These problems raised a question to our global food system. Will it be able to sustain our increasing global population and the earth? With this question in my mind, I decided to investigate the sustainability of our current global food system.
Agriculture is not all work and no play. Many advances can be made in the understanding of agriculture by making available a variety of methods to provide children with a hands-on experience and also educating all individuals about the importance of the practice. The ignorance of urban communities can be overcome with the help of organizations and people within the community. School visits, hands-on experiences, volunteers and organizations are just a few examples of the steps that can be taken to educate Americans about agriculture and close the gap between rural and urban populations.
In the past ten years the world population exceeded six billion people with most of the growth occurring in the poorest, least developed countries in the world. The rapidly increasing population and the quickly declining amount of land are relative and the rate at which hunger is increasing rises with each passing year. We cannot afford to continue to expand our world population at such an alarming rate, for already we are suffering the consequences. Hunger has been a problem for our world for thousands of years. But now that we have the technology and knowledge to stamp it out, time is running short.
Whether or not the agricultural business in the US has improved positively within the last century is always a highly debated topic. Not only have farms expanded exponentially, but they have also focused on producing one single product extensively. In modern day society, farming no longer illustrates a regular-sized lot of land surrounded by neatly plowed rows of dirt, along with a wooden-log house, a barn, horse stalls and a pig pen. Farming has transformed into one general implication: mass cultivation. In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, Steinbeck dissects the transformation of the agricultural industry and the negative effects of corporate farming. Granted that the quality and quantity of cultivation has improved, the impact
...ner efficient energy. Also using water efficiently, we can preserve our water and with preserving water we preserve energy that reduces greenhouse gas pollution. We can always refer back to our grade school motto for the environment, which is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle which is very essential to our environment.
One of the most complex issues in the world today concerns human population. The number of people living off the earth’s resources and stressing its ecosystem has doubled in just forty years. In 1960 there were 3 billion of us; today there are 6 billion. We have no idea what maximum number of people the earth will support. Therefore, the very first question that comes into people’s mind is that are there enough food for all of us in the future? There is no answer for that. Food shortage has become a serious problem among many countries around the world. There are many different reasons why people are starving all over the world. The lack of economic justice and water shortages are just merely two examples out of them all.
There are those that believe our planet has reached its maximum capacity to sustain humanity and we need to reduce our population to rectify it. It is also said that our planet is well capable of providing both the nutrition and caloric needs for humanity, both now and into the future as well. Regardless of where one’s opinion of the facts fall between these two arguments, global food security is not where it should be. Uneven development could be argued to be a cause of this. But it is not the only issue affecting the planet.