The Economy or the Biodiversity?
What are we talking about?
Agriculture is the artificial cultivation and processing of plants and animals for food, fibers and other by-products. It is farming from different vegetations to raising different animals in farms. People are planting crops and raising animals for the purpose of earning money. People also need agriculture because they are the ones who provide us with food and sometimes money. There are two types of agriculture; industrial agriculture and sustainable agriculture.
What's the difference?
If you think everything is fine with our agriculture today, you might be wrong. People today are more concerned about making profit than taking good care of our plants and animals today. They use the modern way of industrial agriculture rather than the traditional way of sustainable agriculture. What is the difference of industrial and sustainable agriculture?
The Modern Way
Industrial Agriculture is a form of modern way farming that refers to industrialized production of livestock and crops. This means that its the way of farming where they just focus on making profit. People will do everything to make their crops grow faster and bigger so that they would earn more money.
The Traditional Way
Sustainable Agriculture is a form of farming where it involves using the principles of ecology. It is considered to be the safe way of farming because they don't use chemicals that enhance the growth of their by-products and they take care of their animal's well being. This is a more expensive way of farming because it requires hard work and the natural necessities of the animals like clean food and clean shelter.
The Problem
Now that we know the different types of farming and their effects on society we can now focus on the problem. Since industrial agriculture is less expensive than sustainable agriculture, more people are relying on it. But is it really necessary to rely on this modern way of farming?
Industrial Agriculture has its negative effects. It may be a good thing that its less expensive than the sustainable agriculture but do you know what`s behind it? First of all, it has the risk of allowing less productive breeds to becoming extinct. Second, most of their products aren't as healthy as the products from sustainable agriculture.
The world is growing every day so there's need for more resources. The main purpose of Industrial Agriculture is to keep up with the demand of the people. They want their livestock breeds and crop varieties to grow fast and big. They put different chemicals to help the livestock, mostly poultry, grow fat.
The benefits of relying on a few highly productive livestock breeds and crop varieties do not outweigh the risks of reducing genetic diversity. If we continue to rely on a few breeds and completely ignore the less productive breeds, they will become extinct. What if in the future a new disease will be discovered and the only epidemic will be the extinct less productive breeds.
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