Agriculture And Forestry Essay

1367 Words3 Pages

For many years climate change has become a crucial issue around the globe. The environment has considerably deteriorated by the change of climate: seasons are shifting, the earth 's climate is changing, sea levels are rising and ice is melting. Global warming and the greenhouse effect is a topic that is becoming more and more concerning and a lot of research is done in order to examine what the issues are and how these affect the economy (Stern, 2006; CCRA, 2012) but also business industry and politics (Hanley & Owen, 2004). This phenomenon is a result of approximately 100 years of carbon-dioxide emission (amongst other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere (Stern, 2006). It is a serious phenomenon affecting the environment and living organisms. …show more content…

Approximately 4 million people are employed in these sectors (CCRA, 2012). Commercial forestry plays a very important role in the UK economy since it is beneficial to tourism, education, biodiversity and recreation (CCRA, 2012). More particularly, there has been a significant increase in the Gross Domestic Product agriculture contribution from 1.4% in 1996 (Muriel et al, 1996) to 7.1 % of GDP during 2011 (CCRA, 2012). This demonstrates how important the role of agriculture and forestry in the economy is. Due to flooding from rivers and the sea, substantial quantities of land can potentially be unsuitable for any agriculture activity (Gill, 2012). Heavy rainfall causes floods and potentially soil erosion. It also encourages the creation of pests and diseases, resulting to substantial crop losses (CCRA, 2012). On the other hand, some opportunities also arise; wealth of water availability causes increase in Sitka Spruce yield in Scotland (CCRA, 2012). Overall, the challenges outweigh the opportunities and the impact on agriculture is undoubtedly becoming more …show more content…

Due to the extreme weather conditions, the UK should be prepared accordingly to protect the crops and animals. One of the biggest losses in England was in 2007, were more than 40,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed due to floods, basically what brought a 40% of the products and the economic loss from 7 to 19 million pounds (Farming Futures, 2010). If greenhouse gas emission is carefully reduced to minimise the problems and risks then also better quality products will be more profitable for producers and consumers (Nelson, 2010). The flooding of rivers and rise of surface waters tends to increase the contamination underground and sometimes causes peat erosion in the soil. As a result, farmers cannot use the water and are forced to purchase it, for example, a herd of about 200 animals can cost approximately £10,000 of water expenses per year (Farming Futures, 2010). A possible solution is to create an organisation that can give smart, economical and less time consuming solution to the problems of climate change on farming, for instance, the problem with water could make a plan that will store water in reserved made any case of difficulty on this subject

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