Intensive farming

Intensive farming or intensive agriculture is an agricultural production system characterized by the high inputs of capital, fertilizers, labour, or labor-saving technologies such as pesticides relative to land area.^[1][2] This is in contrast to the concept of Extensive Agriculture which involves a low input of materials and labour with the crop yield depending largely on the naturally available soil fertility, water supply or other land qualities.^[3]

A potato field

Modern day forms of intensive crop based agriculture involve the use of mechanical ploughing, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, plant growth regulators and/or pesticides. It is associated with the increasing use of agricultural mechanization, which have enabled a substantial increase in production.^[1]

Intensive animal farming practices can involve very large numbers of animals raised on limited land which require large amounts of food, water and medical inputs (required to keep the animals healthy in cramped conditions).^[2]. Very large or confined indoor intensive livestock operations (particularly descriptive of common US farming practices) are often referred to as Factory farming^[4][1][5] and are criticised by opponents for the low level of animal welfare standards^[5][6] and associated pollution and health issues.^[7][8]

Advantages and Disadvantages

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Advantages

Intensive agriculture has a number of benefits^[9]:

• Significantly increased yield per available space than extensive farming.
• Often leads to cheaper priced products because of better general production rate for the cost of raw materials.
• Not much space for the animal(s) to move therefore less energy used up; so less food supplied to the cattle, which leads to cheaper products.
• Many people feel its necessary to use intensive farming for better profits and economic growth.

Disadvantages

Intensive farming alters the environment in many ways.

• Removal of buffers to make large fields for maximum efficiency leading to lower food costs and greater food availability to the poor. But it also limits the natural habitat of some wild creatures and can lead to soil erosion.
• Use of fertilizers can alter the biology of rivers and lakes.^[8] Some environmentalists attribute the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico as being encouraged by nitrogen fertilization of the algae bloom.
  • Pesticides can kill useful insects as well as those that destroy crops.
  • Generally not sustainable.
  • Often results in an inferior product.
  • Use of chemicals on fields creates run-off, excess runs off into rivers and lakes causing pollution.
  • Animal Welfare is significantly decreased compared to organic, animals are kept in tight living conditions, over-fed and only have a small live span before being slaughtered

  Pre modern intensive farming

  Pre modern intensive farming techniques and structures include terracing, rice paddies, and various forms of aquaculture.

  Oysters

  "Oysters were likely the first sea animal to be transported from one area to another and cultivated as food. The ancient world, while knowing little about the reproduction of oysters, knew much about the conditions necessary for their growth. Pliny the Elder, a noted Roman naturalist of the first century, has left an account of artificial oyster beds established in Lake Lucrinus near Naples by a Sergius Orata about 95 B.C. Orata's methods consisted of preparing the grounds by removing other forms of marine life, planting seed oysters, cultivating the oysters by keeping them separated in order to grow to a well-formed, mature size, and finally harvesting them when they were ready for market. Modern oyster farming, based on the knowledge of oyster biology, basically follows the Roman procedure.Fisheries and Oceans Canada] article American Oyster

  Terrace

  Image:Terrace field yunnan china denoised.jpg

  Terrace rice fields in Yunnan Province, China

  Main article: Terrace (agriculture)

  In agriculture, a terrace is a leveled section of a hilly cultivated area, designed as a method of soil conservation to slow or prevent the rapid surface runoff of irrigation water. Often such land is formed into multiple terraces, giving a stepped appearance. The human landscapes of rice cultivation in terraces that follow the natural contours of the escarpments like contour ploughing is a classic feature of the island of Bali and the Banaue Rice Terraces in Benguet, Philippines. In Peru, the Inca made use of otherwise unusable slopes by drystone walling to create terraces.

  Rice paddy

  Main article: Paddy field

  A paddy field is a flooded parcel of arable land used for growing rice and other semiaquatic crops. Paddy fields are a typical feature of rice-growing countries of east and southeast Asia including Malaysia, China, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines. They are also found in other rice-growing regions such as Piedmont (Italy), the Camargue (France) and the Artibonite Valley (Haiti). They can occur naturally along rivers or marshes, or can be constructed, even on hillsides, often with much labour and materials. They require large quantities of water for irrigation, which can be quite complex for a highly developed system of paddy fields. Flooding provides water essential to the growth of the crop. It also gives an environment favourable to the strain of rice being grown, and is hostile to many species of weeds. As the only draft animal species which is adapted for life in wetlands, the water buffalo is in widespread use in Asian rice paddies. There are significant adverse environmental impacts from rice paddy cultivation due to the generation of large quantities of methane gas. World methane production due to rice paddies has been estimated in the range of 50 to 100 million tonnes per annum;^[10] this level of greenhouse gas generation is a large component of the global warming threat and derives simply from an expanding human population.

  Rice-farming and the use of paddies in Korea is ancient. Korean paddy-farming can provide cultural background on the use of paddies in East Asia. A pit-house at the Daecheon-ni site yielded carbonized rice grains and radiocarbon dates indicating that rice cultivation may have begun as early as the Middle Jeulmun Pottery Period (c. 3500-2000 B.C.) in the Korean Peninsula (Crawford and Lee 2003). The earliest rice cultivation in the Korean Peninsula may have used dry-fields instead of paddies.

  The earliest Mumun features were usually located in low-lying narrow gulleys that were naturally swampy and fed by the local stream system. Some Mumun paddies in flat areas were made of a series of squares and rectangles separated by bunds approximately 10 cm in height, while terraced paddies consisted of long irregularly shapes that followed natural contours of the land at various levels (Bale 2001; Kwak 2001).

  Mumun Period rice farmers used all of the elements that are present in today's paddies such terracing, bunds, canals, and small reservoirs. We can grasp some paddy-farming techniques of the Middle Mumun (c. 850-550 B.C.) from the well-preserved wooden tools excavated from archaeological rice paddies at the Majeon-ni Site. However, iron tools for paddy-farming were not introduced until sometime after 200 B.C. The spatial scale of individual paddies, and thus entire paddy-fields, increased with the regular use of iron tools in the Three Kingdoms of Korea Period (c. A.D. 300/400-668).

  Modern Intensive farming Types

  Main article: Industrial agriculture

  Modern intensive farming refers to the industrialized production of animals (livestock, poultry and fish) and crops. The methods deployed are designed to produce the highest output at the lowest cost; usually using economies of scale, modern machinery, modern medicine, and global trade for financing, purchases and sales. The practice is widespread in developed nations, and most of the meat, dairy, eggs, and crops available in supermarkets are produced in this manner.

  Intensive Aquaculture

  Main article: Aquaculture

  Aquaculture is the cultivation of the natural produce of water (fish, shellfish, algae, seaweed and other aquatic organisms). Intensive Aquaculture can often involve tanks or other highly controlled systems which are designed to boost production for the available volume or area of water resource.^[11][12]

  Intensive Livestock Farming

  Main article: Factory farming

  The modern examples of intensive farming are broadly referred to as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or often termed Factory farming. These include:

  • Intensive pig farming or Intensive piggery farming
  • Large scale chicken farms
  • Cattle feed lots

  See also

  • Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture
  • Permaculture
  • Polyculture
  • Green Revolution
  • System of Rice Intensification
  • Alan Kirton

  References

  1. ^ ^{a b c} Encyclopaedia Britannica's definition of Intensive Agriculture
  2. ^ ^{a b} BBC School fact sheet on intensive farming
  3. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica's definition of Extensive Agriculture
  4. ^ Factory farming. Webster's Dictionary definition of Factory farming
  5. ^ ^{a b} Encyclopaedia Britannica's definition of Factory farm
  6. ^ The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs
  7. ^ Commissioner points to factory farming as source of contamination
  8. ^ ^{a b} Rebuilding Agriculture - EPA of UK
  9. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica - Intensive Agriculture
  10. ^ Methane gas generation from rice paddies
  11. ^ American Heritage Definition of Aquaculture
  12. ^ McGraw Hill Sci-Tech Encyclopedia

  
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