Farms were self-sustainable, the operation cost was cheap, you didn’t farm as business, and most importantly, you didn’t have to rely on anyone. In the twenty-first century, farming has become like any other business with corporate offices, income summaries, bills, and a need for multiple people to make everything function. The way farming is versus the way farming was are totally different. In today’s world, we are seeing the sustainable family farm dying off. These farms provide high quality food and produce, challenge and compete between other small farms to create this high quality market, and don’t use up our natural resources.
Farmers have to pay for technology that helps them keep up the land, and they usually have to pay people to help them because not all farmers can keep up their land by themselves. Also, restrictions from fossil fuels is another major issues for farmers. Fossil fuels help create fertilizers. Without fertilizers, crops would be vulnerable to pesticides and other things that would damage the plants. Today, people waste plenty of food; we over order or eat, and then throw away what we don 't want.
Pollan writes, “Yet perhaps the gravest threat now to local food economies is, of all things, the government’s own well-intentioned efforts to clean up the industrial food supply” (Pollan 450). This statement basically means that as the government spends more money in an attempt to improve the overall cleanliness of industrial farms the local farms are forced to spend money they do not have. Local farming economies must maintain their farms as closely as they can to the government’s standards. This means they must spend large amounts of money improving their facilities. Local markets typically bring in less money than the average store or supermarket.
We won’t be driving to the stores as often, so that is less fuel emission in the air. If we are out in the yard gardening we won’t be using the electricity inside the house, which saves energy. If we are busy working up a sweat in the garden we will
Although his ultimate vision is to see local economies and communities flourish, using the food industry as an analogy makes the possibility of survival in smaller communities seem much more plausible. Although McKibben’s sample size for his year of eating locally was a family of one, it demonstrated that surviving on local economies, on local food, is more than possible. It must be noted that this change would not just benefit the environment, but, for McKibben, restructuring society into smaller, local communities may be necessary for humanity’s survival (McKibben 227). McKibben’s focus on the ever-growing popularity of industrial agriculture helps to demonstrate the dangers of the “efficient” mindset society as been obsessed with since World War II. For McKibben the goals of constant growth have been warped and corrupted, and has damaged the environment and society as a whole.
The shortage of water has it, farmers, hard as well. Without enough water, farmers can grow as many of their crops as they used too. The shortage of crops leads to higher prices in the markets. Climate change also affects what type of vegetation the farmers can plant. Not all vegetation can flourish in higher temperatures.
Multiple times a year the farmer’s market occurs all around the world, supporting local farms and businesses this event brings the community closer together. When most people would buy produce and other goods from a supermarket, the locavore movement encourages buying from locals to promote a healthy lifestyle and protecting the environment. The locavore movement should be supported, however it is connected to highly controversial issues such as nutrition, the environment, and the economy. . Locally grown food has been proven to be more nutritious than that of commercially grown produce, and it tastes better.
The enviropig has a big influence on agriculture. Thus, enviropigs should be evaluated upon their direct effect on human nutrition and health, animal welfare related to the transgene itself, and the environment. However, the breeders of the enviropig themselves argue that its market is the developing world. [5] Enviropigs are not able to survive on their own in the wild as they fully depend on humans. Enviropigs are not yet approved by the food and drug administrative of health Canada due to the discoveries made aware to them.
The Industrial Revolution brought down the prices of crops produced by farmers, this meant that farmers were not making enough money to pay off their debts. This increasing problem was slowly digging farmers into a hole with what seemed to be no escape. To add on to their everlasting money problems, middlemen and railroad companies were price gouging the farmers. This meant, the companies were asking farmers to pay prices which had been far higher than the actual value of the products needed for the farmers to raise crops. Companies did this, because they knew that farmers could not buy their goods from other businesses due to the fact that there were not any others in sight.
1. Introduction Water is crucial to our survival! Water is one of the scarcest commodities in the world at the moment; some argue that it is scarcer than oil. Wars have been fought over oil; therefore a war over water is a very big possibility in the years to come on this planet. With the current growth of the world’s population and the increase in demand for water in the agricultural industry, the issue of water scarcity is very likely to get worse and worse (Gupta, 2016).