Relationship between Environmental Impacts and Modern Agriculture

There are many problems faced by modern agriculture, include: urbanization of farmland, water rights and usage, environmental concerns, and the procurement of government subsidies. Cycles of nutrients, energy, water and wastes have become more open, rather than closed as in a natural ecosystem. Despite the substantial amount of crop residues and manure produced in farms, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recycle nutrients, even within agricultural systems. Animal wastes cannot economically be returned to the land in a nutrient-recycling process because production systems are geographically remote from other systems which would complete the cycle. In many areas, agricultural waste has become a liability rather than a resource. Recycling of nutrients from urban centers back to the fields is similarly difficult. The specialization of production units has led to the image that agriculture is a modern miracle of food production. The environmental impacts of ecological diseases have been associated with the intensification of food production. They may be grouped into followings: erosion, loss of soil fertility, depletion of nutrient reserves, salinization and alkalinization, pollution of soil and water systems, loss of fertile field lands to urban development, loss of crop, wild plant, and animal genetic resources, elimination of natural enemies, pest resurgence and genetic resistance to pesticides, chemical contamination, and destruction of natural control mechanisms. Agricultural policies must consider new parameters, such as massive reallocation of agricultural land use, the substitution of current food crops with energy crops, and the potential contributions of agriculture to global economic development. It is clear that there is no choice but to produce more with less. Environmental sustainability in agriculture is no longer an option but an imperative. There are three crucial environmental challenges in the agriculture sector: conservation of biodiversity, mitigation of climate change and the global shift towards bioenergy.