Industrial Crop Production: Part 1 - Environmental and Social Impacts

Hellooo, and welcome back! I hope you all enjoyed getting creative and discovering new recipes with the COP21 Recipe Challenge. Now, I’d like to return to our critical analysis of certain food production practices, with the focus of today being: Industrial Crop Production.

We have so far learned about the environmental impacts of the livestock industry, which have left many presenting me with a case for pro-veganism. However, we must not forget that plant-based diets also have a major effect on the environment, and that by simply omitting meat and dairy from our diets does not come without its own set of problems! So, what’s the planet’s beef with industrial crop production?

Land-Use Change and Deforestation

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Crop production is a major driver of land-use change and deforestation. As discussed previously in relation to livestock production, the conversion of forestland threatens native species, ecosystems, and displaces and releases vast stores of carbon, decreasing the Earth’s ability to absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

However, despite the millions of individuals in the world who live in food poverty, a large proportion of these crops are not grown specifically for human food consumption. According to the FAO, up to 33% of cropland is utilised in livestock feed, with further significant percentages being designated to the production of medicine, clothing, alcohol and biofuels. According to an article in TIME magazine, 25% of the corn harvested in the United States, in 2007, was used toward biofuel production. Although the conversion of crops to biofuels sound beneficial in theory, this raises serious concerns in terms of global food security, at the expense of choosing “clean energy” cars (for our own non-mandatory satisfaction) over feeding the planet. Despite this, the use of biofuels are not as widely spread in all other parts of the world, and thus are not necessarily an immediate threat to food security.

Irrigation and Water Resource Depletion

Graph: Comparison of yield between irrigated (blue) and rain-fed crops (orange)
Source: www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4683e/y4683e07.htm

With around 1.2 billion people in the world living in areas of water insecurity, the preservation and use of water in agriculture is of incredibly high importance. As demonstrated in the graph, crops fed with irrigated water produce much higher yields than rain-fed crops, with some results showing a yield of 2 to 3 times as high. This is great news in terms of global food security, however, as with everything in life, irrigation comes with its own set of environmental and ethical problems:

• Groundwater and water source pollution through the use of fertilisers and pesticides
• Reduced availability and/or quality of water for humans and other wildlife, i.e. water depletion
• Decrease in agricultural employment, and less available jobs
• Soil and land degradation, soil acidification and salinization
• Change in river hydrology or flow
• Increased evaporation of water within the system
• Higher occurrences of waterlogging, i.e. soil saturated with water

Desertification

https://www.wageningenur.nl/

Desertification is a type of land degradation caused by the conversion of arid, semi-arid or grass land into desert through either direct or indirect human activities, or changes in climate. Typical causes of desertification include poor land-use management, deforestation, agriculture, overgrazing, excessive use of water and excessive cultivation of crops.

This poses a threat to global food security, as the more land that is degraded, the less available land there is to use for agriculture. With the population set to increase from 7 billion to 9.6 billion by 2050, the reduction of available agricultural land will put an immense pressure on the need for further deforestation and land-use change projects. It is estimated that almost one-sixth of the land surface is already affected by desertification to an extent.

Additionally, this change in natural environment will also have a great impact on biodiversity loss and ecosystem changes which, in turn, has a knock-on effect on faraway areas.

Fertilisers

The use of fertilisers in food production is a controversial issue, particularly amongst organic food lovers. Their capacity to allow the expansion of potential food production and feed our vast population is undeniable, yet their power to wreak havoc with the environment is equally something that we cannot ignore.

Contamination of groundwater and surface through high use of fertilisers is a common occurrence, and can increase the amount of nutrients and pollutants in the water sources, leading to eutrophication, health expenses, water treatment costs, increased mortality in fish and other aquatic or land species. Additionally, the commercial and widespread use of fertilisers can lead to poor soil health, which includes soil degradation, pollution and acidification.

http://www.latrobefertilisers.com.au/

Fertilisers are not just a pollutant of water, but also a potential air pollutant. Their emissions of various nitrogen oxides increase tropospheric ozone, which is caused by the reaction between nitrogen oxides and sunlight. This can have a damaging effect on the health, biodiversity and crops themselves. It is predicted that 35% of cereals are already vulnerable to high levels of tropospheric ozone.

Lastly, we cannot forget that the manufacturing process to produce fertilisers require vast quantities of fossil fuels, particularly the use of natural gas. Thus, from an environmentalist’s perspective, fertilisers are a further dependence on fossil fuels, which we are trying to diverge away from!

Yet, this puts me, and probably you too, in a serious dilemma. Realistically, food production is so highly dependent on the use of fertilisers, and so to totally eradicate them would likely cause mass global hunger and mortality. However, their environmental impacts are leading to a similar fate. The latter is slower, with possible mitigation strategies in the future, but is highly unethical. Maybe a gradual phasing out of fertilisers would be a good solution? Although, I’m not entirely sure if that’s possible, with such a high population to feed… If anyone could give their insight on that one, I’d be really interested to hear your views!

Pesticides

Pesticide use, including herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and disinfectants, are another controversial aspect of crop production. They carry similar environmental impacts to fertilisers, for example, water contamination, air pollution, soil degradation and pollution, human health and ecosystems.

http://evanslab.org.uk/

The most known environmental or ecological impact is the effect of pesticide use on bees. Honey bees, in particular, are exposed to pesticides due to their high dependence on crops, such as, maize, sunflower and oilseed rape. Bees often transport pesticides in pollen and nectar, and store it within the hive, leaving non-foraging bees exposed to toxic effects of pesticides. This is supposedly taken into account by pesticide manufacturers, who ensure that doses of neonicotinoids (the damaging toxin) are below what is considered lethal (without a controlled setting)(. Despite this, decline in bee populations are still prevalent through the exposure of sub-lethal doses of neonicotinoids in pesticides. As common pollinators of major food sources, including commercial crops, this could have a potentially devastating impact on the food web and ecosystems.

Furthermore, the use of pesticides becomes a bit of an arms race between humans and pests. It is thought that within approximately 10years, most insects become resistant to insecticides, and for some bacteria this resistant to antibiotics can occur within 1-3 years. In this respect, it’s a never-ending struggle, with the end result being super-resistant pests with more potential of harm to human health.

Monocropping

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Monocropping is an agricultural practice where only a single crop is grown in an area from year to year, without rotating. Crop rotation is important for increased soil health and quality, thus monocropping leads to soil degradation and smaller yields. If soil degradation persists over time, this could lead to the land being usable for agricultural purposes, and thus reducing the amount of available land for food production.

The genetic uniformity of crops contributes to a lack of biodiversity in animal and plant species, as well as increase the crops’ susceptibility to pests and disease, hence the heightened use of pesticides in crop production. With 60% of the human food source dependent on only three cereals (wheat, rice and corn), this makes monocropping a huge threat global food security.