essay on impact of agriculture on environment

Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Modifications

With the human population soaring out of control, agriculture must follow suit. But the innovations that boost crop yields carry ecological costs.

Biology, Ecology, Chemistry, Conservation

Rice Fields in Bali

More than half the planet's suitable land has been cultivated for crops, like these terraced rice fields in Bali, Indonesia.

Photograph by Cyril Ruoso/NaturePL

Agricultural methods have intensified continuously ever since the Industrial Revolution, and even more so since the “green revolution” in the middle decades of the 20th century. At each stage, innovations in farming techniques brought about huge increases in crop yields by area of arable land. This tremendous rise in food production has sustained a global population that has quadrupled in size over the span of one century. As the human population continues to grow, so too has the amount of space dedicated to feeding it. According to World Bank figures, in 2016, more than 700 million hectares (1.7 billion acres) were devoted to growing corn, wheat, rice, and other staple cereal grains—nearly half of all cultivated land on the planet. In the coming decades, however, meeting the demand for accelerated agricultural productivity is likely to be far more difficult than it has been so far. The reasons for this have to do with ecological factors. Global climate change is destabilizing many of the natural processes that make modern agriculture possible. Yet modern agriculture itself is also partly responsible for the crisis in sustainability. Many of the techniques and modifications on which farmers rely to boost output also harm the environment. Below are brief descriptions of three ways intensive agriculture threatens the precarious balance of nonagricultural ecosystems. Irrigation Worldwide, agriculture accounts for 70 percent of human freshwater consumption. A great deal of this water is redirected onto cropland through irrigation schemes of varying kinds. Experts predict that to keep a growing population fed, water extraction may increase an additional 15 percent or more by 2050. Irrigation supports the large harvest yields that such a large population demands. Many of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, from California’s Central Valley to Southern Europe’s arid Mediterranean basin, have become economically dependent on heavy irrigation. Researchers and farmers alike are becoming increasingly aware of the consequences of this large-scale diversion of freshwater. One of the most obvious consequences is the depletion of aquifers , river systems, and downstream ground water. However, there are a number of other negative effects related to irrigation. Areas drenched by irrigation can become waterlogged , creating soil conditions that poison plant roots through anaerobic decomposition . Where water has been diverted, soils can accrue too much salt, also harming plant growth. Irrigation causes increases in water evaporation, impacting both surface air temperature and pressure as well as atmospheric moisture conditions. Recent studies have confirmed that cropland irrigation can influence rainfall patterns not only over the irrigated area but even thousands of miles away. Irrigation has also been connected to the erosion of coastlines and other kinds of long-term ecological and habitat destruction. Livestock Grazing A huge amount of agricultural territory is used primarily as pasture for cattle and other livestock. In the western United States, counting both federally managed and privately owned grazing lands, hundreds of millions of acres are set aside for this purpose—more than for any other type of land use. Agricultural livestock are responsible for a large proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, most notably methane. In addition, overgrazing is a major problem regarding environmental sustainability. In some places, stretches of forage land are consumed so extensively that grasses are unable to regenerate. The root systems of native vegetation can be damaged so much that the species die off. Near streambeds and in other riparian areas where cattle concentrate, the combination of overgrazing and fecal wastes can contaminate or compromise water sources. Cattle and other large grazing animals can even damage soil by trampling on it. Bare, compacted land can bring about soil erosion and destruction of topsoil quality due to the runoff of nutrients. These and other impacts can destabilize a variety of fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitats. Chemical Fertilizer Synthetic fertilizers containing nitrogen and phosphorus have been at the heart of the intensified farming from World War II to the present day. Modern agriculture has become heavily dependent on these chemical inputs, which have increased the number of people the world’s farms can feed. They are particularly effective in the growing of corn, wheat, and rice, and are largely responsible for the explosive growth of cereal cultivation in recent decades. China, with its rapidly growing population, has become the world’s leading producer of nitrogen fertilizers. While these chemicals have helped double the rate of food production, they have also helped bring about a gigantic increase, perhaps as high as 600 percent, of reactive nitrogen levels throughout the environment. The excess levels of nitrogen and phosphorus have caused the once-beneficial nutrients to become pollutants. Roughly half the nitrogen in synthetic fertilizers escapes from the fields where it is applied, finding its way into the soil, air, water, and rainfall. After soil bacteria convert fertilizer nitrogen into nitrates, rainstorms or irrigation systems carry these toxins into groundwater and river systems. Accumulated nitrogen and phosphorus harm terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems by loading them with too many nutrients, a process known as eutrophication . Nutrient pollution is a causal factor in toxic algae blooms affecting lakes in China, the United States, and elsewhere. As excessive amounts of organic matter decompose in aquatic environments, they can bring about oxygen depletion and create “dead zones” within bodies of water, where nothing can survive. Parts of the Gulf of Mexico are regularly afflicted in this manner. Nitrogen accumulation in water and on land threatens biodiversity and the health of native plant species and natural habitats. In addition, fertilizer application in soil leads to the formation and release of nitrous oxide, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. With the global population continuing to skyrocket, the tension will continue to grow between continued agricultural growth and the ecological health of the land upon which humans depend.

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Essay on Impact Of Agriculture On Environment

Students are often asked to write an essay on Impact Of Agriculture On Environment in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Impact Of Agriculture On Environment

Land changes.

Farming changes land. Trees are cut to make farms, which means animals lose homes. This is called deforestation. It’s bad because trees help clean the air. Without trees, there’s more carbon dioxide, a gas that warms our planet.

Growing crops needs a lot of water. Sometimes, farmers take too much water from rivers and lakes. This can make these places dry up. It’s hard for fish and plants that need water to live when this happens.

Chemicals in Farming

Farmers use chemicals to keep bugs and weeds away from crops. These chemicals can get into the water and soil. This can hurt animals, plants, and even people who drink the water.

Soil Health

Farming can make soil less healthy. When the same crop is grown over and over, the soil loses its goodness. This means the land might not be able to grow crops in the future.

Helping the Environment

Farmers can help by using less water and chemicals. They can also grow different types of crops to keep the soil healthy. People are working on ways to farm without hurting the environment.

250 Words Essay on Impact Of Agriculture On Environment

Farming changes the land a lot. When we make space for crops and animals, we often cut down forests and grasslands. This means less home for wild animals and plants. The soil can get worse too, because there are no trees to keep it healthy and stop it from washing away when it rains.

Growing food needs a lot of water. Sometimes, farmers take more water from rivers and lakes than they should. This can mean not enough water for fish and other creatures. Also, if water is not used wisely, it can lead to problems like dry rivers and dropping water levels in the ground.

To protect crops from bugs and weeds, farmers often use chemicals. These can get into rivers and hurt fish and other water life. They can also make the soil less good for growing things over time. Plus, these chemicals can be bad for the health of people who live nearby.

Air Pollution

Farming can also add to air pollution. Machines like tractors release smoke that can dirty the air. Animals on farms, like cows, produce gases that can add to climate change. This is a big problem because it can lead to hotter weather and more extreme storms.

Farming is important because it gives us food. But it can also harm the environment in many ways. We need to find ways to grow food that are kind to the earth. This means using less water, fewer chemicals, and taking care of the land and air.

500 Words Essay on Impact Of Agriculture On Environment

Introduction to agriculture and the environment.

Agriculture is the art of growing plants and raising animals for food, clothing, and other products. It is a big part of our daily lives because we all need to eat and wear clothes. But farming also touches the environment in many ways. The environment includes the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we live on. When we farm, we change the environment, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in not-so-good ways.

Using Land for Farming

To grow crops or keep animals, farmers need a lot of land. This means they often have to clear forests or grasslands to make space for their farms. This can lead to fewer trees and plants that are homes for wild animals and birds. It also means there are fewer trees to soak up carbon dioxide from the air, which is important for keeping our planet’s temperature stable.

Water and Farming

Plants and animals on farms need water to live. Sometimes, farmers take a lot of water from rivers, lakes, or underground to water their crops. This can mean there is less water for fish, frogs, and other creatures that live in these places. It can also mean there is less water for people to drink or use for their homes.

Chemicals on the Farm

Farmers often use chemicals to help their crops grow better and to keep bugs and weeds away. These chemicals are called fertilizers and pesticides. While they can help the plants, they can also harm other living things. If too much of these chemicals get into the water or the soil, they can make it dirty and unsafe for wildlife and people.

Good Things Farming Does for the Environment

It’s not all bad news, though. Farming can also do nice things for the environment. Some farmers make sure they grow a variety of plants, which can help make the soil healthy and be good for insects like bees and butterflies. They also create ponds and leave some areas wild, which gives homes to lots of different animals and plants.

Climate Change and Agriculture

Farming can also affect the weather and climate. When we grow animals like cows and sheep, they produce gases that can make the Earth warmer. This is a big problem because a warmer Earth can lead to more extreme weather like heavy rains, hot spells, and droughts. But farmers can help by using less gas and oil on their farms and by growing trees and plants that store carbon dioxide.

In conclusion, agriculture has a big impact on the environment. It can change the land, use a lot of water, and spread chemicals that might not be safe. But farming can also do good things, like help wildlife and fight climate change. It’s important for farmers to think about how they farm, so they can feed us without hurting the planet. We all can help by knowing where our food comes from and choosing to eat things that are good for the environment.

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Environmental Impacts of Food Production

Agriculture has a significant environmental impact in three key ways. 

First, it requires large amounts of fresh water , which can cause significant environmental pressures in regions with water stress. It needs water as input and pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans by releasing nutrients.

It is a crucial driver of climate change, responsible for around one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions .

Finally, agriculture has a massive impact on the world’s environment due to its enormous land use . Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture.

Large parts of the world that were once covered by forests and wildlands are now used for agriculture. This loss of natural habitat has been the main driver for reducing the world’s biodiversity . Wildlife can rebound if we reduce agricultural land use and allow natural lands to restore.

Ensuring everyone has access to a nutritious diet sustainably is one of the most significant challenges we face. On this page, you can find our data, visualizations, and writing relating to the environmental impacts of food.

Related topics

• Biodiversity
• Hunger and Undernourishment
• CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Key insights on the Environmental Impacts of Food

Food production has a large environmental impact in several ways.

What are the environmental impacts of food and agriculture?

The visualization here shows a summary of some of the main global impacts:

• Food production accounts for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. 1
• Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free.
• 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture 2 .
• 78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by agriculture. 3 Eutrophication is the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich water.
• 94% of non-human mammal biomass is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1. 4 This share is 97% when only land-based mammals are included.
• 71% of bird biomass is poultry livestock. This means poultry livestock outweigh wild birds by a factor of more than 3-to-1. 5

Tackling what we eat, and how we produce our food, plays a key role in tackling climate change, reducing water stress and pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world’s wildlife.

Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture

Around half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is land that is ice- and desert-free. This is what the visualization shows.

Agricultural land is the sum of pasture used for livestock grazing, and cropland used for direct human consumption and animal feed.

Agriculture is, therefore, the world’s largest land user, taking up more area than forests, or wild grasslands.

Three-quarters of this agricultural land is used for livestock, which is pasture plus cropland used for the production of animal feed. This gives the world just 18% of global calories, and 37% of its protein. The other quarter of land is for crops for human consumption, which provide the majority of the world’s calories and protein.

What you should know about this data

• Other studies find similar distributions of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al. (2010) found that by 2000, 55% of Earth’s ice-free (not simply habitable) land had been converted into cropland, pasture, and urban areas. 6 This left only 45% as ‘natural’ or ‘semi-natural’ land.
• The study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018) estimates that 43% of ice- and desert-free land is used for agriculture. 83% of this is used for animal-sourced foods. 7
• The difference in these figures is often due to the uncertainty of the size of ‘rangelands’. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. The intensity of grazing on rangelands can vary a lot. That can make it difficult to accurately quantify how much rangelands are used for grazing, and therefore how much is used for food production.
• But as the review above showed, despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.

Food is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s emissions

Food systems are responsible for around one-quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. 8

This includes emissions from land use change, on-farm production, processing, transport, packaging, and retail.

We can break these food system emissions down into four broad categories:

30% of food emissions come directly from livestock and fisheries . Ruminant livestock – mainly cattle – for example, produce methane through their digestive processes. Manure and pasture management also fall into this category.

1% comes from wild fisheries , most of which is fuel consumption from fishing vessels. 

Crop production accounts for around a quarter of food emissions. This includes crops for human consumption and animal feed.

Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).

Finally, supply chains account for 18% of food emissions . This includes food processing, distribution, transport, packaging, and retail.

Other studies estimate that an even larger fraction – up to one-third – of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from food production. 9 These differences come from the inclusion of non-food agricultural products – such as textiles, biofuels, and industrial crops – plus uncertainties in food waste and land use emissions.

• The source of this data is the meta-analysis of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science . 10 This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.
• Environmental impacts are calculated based on life-cycle analyses that consider impacts across the supply chain, including land use change, on-farm emissions, the production of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, food processing, transport, packaging, and retail.
• Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO 2 eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO 2 . In this study, CO 2 eq and warming effects are measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP 100 ).

Emissions from food alone would take us past 1.5°C or 2°C this century

One-quarter to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food systems. The rest comes from energy.

While energy and industry make a bigger contribution than food, we must tackle both food and energy systems to address climate change.

Michael Clark and colleagues modeled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be emitted from food systems this century across a range of scenarios. 

In a business-as-usual scenario, the authors expect the world to emit around 1356 billion tonnes of CO 2-we by 2100.

As the visualization shows, this would take us well beyond the carbon budget for 1.5°C – we would emit two to three times more than this budget. And it would consume almost all of our budget for 2°C.

Ignoring food emissions is simply not an option if we want to get close to our international climate targets.

Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow – an impossibility – we would still go well beyond our 1.5°C target, and nearly miss our 2°C target.

• The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Michael Clark et al. (2020), published in Science . 11
• Their ‘business-as-usual’ projection makes the following assumptions: global population increases in line with the UN’s medium fertility scenario; per capita diets change as people around the world get richer (shifting towards more diverse diets with more meat and dairy); crop yields continue to increase in line with historical improvements, and rates of food loss and the emissions intensity of food production remain constant.
• This is measured in global warming potential CO 2 warming-equivalents (CO 2-we ). This accounts for the range of greenhouse gasses, not just CO 2 but also others such as methane and nitrous oxide. We look at the differences in greenhouse gas metrics at the end of our article on the carbon footprint of foods .

What we eat matters much more than how far it has traveled

‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But it’s often a misguided one.

Transport tends to be a small part of a food’s carbon footprint. Globally, transport accounts for just 5% of food system emissions. Most of food’s emissions come from land use change and emissions from their production on the farm.

Since transport emissions are typically small, and the differences between foods are large, what types of food we eat matter much more than how far it has traveled. Locally-produced beef will have a much larger footprint than peas, regardless of whether it’s shipped across continents or not.

The visualization shows this.

Producing a kilogram of beef, for example, emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO 2 -equivalents). The production of a kilogram of peas, shown at the bottom of the chart, emits just 1 kilogram of greenhouse gasses. Whether the beef or peas are produced locally will have little impact on the difference between these two foods.

The reason that transport accounts for such a small share of emissions is that most internationally traded food travels by boat, not by plane. Very little food is air-freighted; it accounts for only 0.16% of food miles. 12 For the few products which are transported by air, the emissions can be very high: flying emits 50 times more CO 2 eq than boat per tonne kilometer.

Unlike aviation, shipping is a very carbon-efficient way to transport goods. So, even shipping food over long distances by boat emits only small amounts of carbon. A classic example of traded food is avocados. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO 2 eq in transport emissions. 13 This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. 

Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.

• The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science . 14 This dataset is based on data from 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.

Meat and dairy foods tend to have a higher carbon footprint

When we compare the carbon footprint of different types of foods, a clear hierarchy emerges.

Meat and dairy products tend to emit more greenhouse gasses than plant-based foods. This holds true whether we compare on the basis of mass (per kilogram) , per kilocalorie , or per gram of protein, as shown in the chart.

Within meat and dairy products, there is also a consistent pattern: larger animals tend to be less efficient and have a higher footprint. Beef typically has the largest emissions; followed by lamb; pork; chicken; then eggs and fish.

• This data presents global average values. For some foods – such as beef – there are large differences depending on where it is produced, and the farming practices used. Nonetheless, the lowest-carbon beef and lamb still have a higher carbon footprint than most plant-based foods.
• The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science . 15 This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.
• Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO 2 eq). This means each greenhouse gas is weighted by its global warming potential value. Global warming potential measures the amount of warming a gas creates compared to CO 2 . For CO 2 eq, this is measured over a 100-year timescale (GWP 100 ).

There are also large differences in the carbon footprint of the same foods

The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food system is to change what we eat . 

Adopting a more plant-based diet by reducing our consumption of carbon-intensive foods such as meat and dairy – especially beef and lamb – is an effective way for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.

But there are also opportunities to reduce emissions by optimizing for more carbon-efficient practices and locations to produce foods. For some foods – in particular, beef, lamb, and dairy – there are large differences in emissions depending on how and where they’re produced. This is shown in the chart.

Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalents (CO 2 eq), on average. But this ranges from 9 kilograms to 105 kilograms of CO 2 eq – a ten-fold difference.

Optimizing production in places where these foods are produced with a smaller footprint could be another effective way of reducing global emissions.

• The source of this data is the meta-analyses of global food systems from Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science . 16 This dataset covers 38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products.

Explore data on the Environmental Impacts of Food

Research & writing.

‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from?

Hannah Ritchie

One-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food’s emissions?

More key articles on the Environmental Impacts of Food

Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint, dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts, yields vs. land use: how the green revolution enabled us to feed a growing population, food production and climate change.

Food miles and transport

Environmental impacts of meat and dairy

Land use and deforestation

Other articles on food impacts

Interactive charts on Environmental Impacts of Food Production

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The Challenge of Feeding the World Sustainably: Summary of the US-UK Scientific Forum on Sustainable Agriculture (2021)

Chapter: 2 agriculture's impacts on biodiversity, the environment, and climate, 2 agriculture’s impacts on biodiversity, the environment, and climate.

Agriculture has had major impacts on biodiversity and the environment. Inputs to agriculture in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, and the mechanization of farming have grown, which has produced higher yields but also has increased pollution of the air, water, and soil. The expansion of agriculture to previously wildland and the more intense harvesting of seafoods have placed new pressures on wild habitats and fisheries. Greenhouse gases from agriculture are contributing to higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, which have further stressed many plant and animal species.

Biodiversity and the state of the environment also have had major impacts on agriculture. Changes in climate are already affecting which crops can be grown where and the productivity of farmlands and pasturelands. Declining biodiversity is reducing the numbers and variety of pollinators, loosening natural checks on pests, and eliminating species that could have benefited humans in the future.

These and other interconnections among agriculture, biodiversity, and the environment add complexity to efforts to change food systems. However, these interactions also increase the number of ways in which agricultural production, biodiversity, and environmental resilience can be enhanced. For example, improving agricultural production while reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture requires considering broader ecological processes and ecosystem services as well as the wider social and cultural consequences of farmers’ knowledge and actions.

A GRICULTURE AND C LIMATE C HANGE

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reflecting a consensus of both scientists and governments, higher temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and greater frequency of extreme events are already affecting food security. 1 For example, fruit and vegetable production, a key component of healthy diets, is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Livestock is also vulnerable, with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature expected to degrade the productivity, species composition, biogeochemistry, and the quantity and the quality of forage available to herbivores in pastoral systems.

Agriculture is already a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and it is likely to become a proportionately greater contributor as other sectors engage in mitigation. Agriculture’s contributions

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1 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2019. Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems. P. R. Shukla, J. Skea, E. Calvo Buendia, V. Masson-Delmotte, H.-O. Pörtner, D. C. Roberts, P. Zhai, R. Slade, S. Connors, R. van Diemen, M. Ferrat, E. Haughey, S. Luz, S. Neogi, M. Pathak, J. Petzold, J. Portugal Pereira, P. Vyas, E. Huntley, K. Kissick, M. Belkacemi, and J. Malley, eds. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC.

to greenhouse gas emissions comes not only from fossil fuel use but also from land clearing for cropping and grazing; methane emissions from ruminant livestock, rice cultivation, and burning of manure and biomass; and nitrous oxide emissions to the atmosphere as a result of fertilizer use. 2 Agriculture uses more inputs of natural resources per unit of value added than any other sector of the economy, including manufacturing, construction, and transportation (see Figure 2-1 ). Furthermore, even with these outsized inputs, the current incremental rate of improvement in agricultural production is only a few percent per year. Even if all non-agricultural fossil fuel use was to stop, future greenhouse gas emissions solely from agriculture because of land clearing, ruminants, manure, rice, burning, and nitrous oxide from fertilized soils would, in total, accumulate so as to exceed the emissions limit set by the Paris Agreement for staying below a 2o Celsius global temperature increase. 3

Challenges from climate change are often multiple and linked, like drought and saltwater intrusion for farmers, or losses due to insect pests in a warming climate. Climate change also produces tradeoffs that have to be accommodated within food systems. For example, increased carbon dioxide can cause crops to grow faster, but it can also lower the nutritional quality of the crops.

2 Smith, P., M. Bustamante, H. Ahammad, H. Clark, H. Dong, E. A. Elsiddig, H. Haberl, R. Harper, J. House, M. Jafari, O. Masera, C. Mbow, N. H. Ravindranath, C. W. Rice, C. Robledo Abad, A. Romanovskaya, F. Sperling, and F. Tubiello. 2014. Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU). In Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution to Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pp. 811–922, O. Edenhofer, R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, A. Adler, I. Baum, S. Brunner, P. Eickemeier, B. Kriemann, J. Savolainen, S. Schlömer, C. von Stechow, T. Zwickel, and J. Minx, eds. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

3 Clark, M. A., N. G. G. Domingo, K. Colgan, S. K. Thakrar, D. Tilman, J. Lynch, I. L. Azevedo, and J. D. Hill. 2020. Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets. Science 370(6517):705–708.

T HE U SE OF N ITROGEN IN A GRICULTURE

The use of nitrogen in agriculture is a good example of the complex interactions among agriculture, climate, and other environmental issues. Since the 1960s, global agricultural use of fertilizer on cropland has increased more than fivefold (see Figure 2-2 ). 4 This has resulted in large increases of nitrogen in the environment, including nitrates in groundwater, runoff into rivers and coastal areas, and increases in the level of nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxides and ammonium contribute to air pollution, with an estimated 19,000 people dying prematurely every year in the United States because of particulate matter caused by these and other agricultural emissions. 5 Nitrous oxide generated largely by agriculture is already responsible for about 8 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming, a number that will go up as nitrogen use continues to increase. 6

4 Lassaletta, L., G. Billen, J. Garnier, L. Bouwman, E. Velazquez, N. D. Mueller, and J. S Gerber. 2016. Nitrogen use in the global food system: Past trends and future trajectories of agronomic performance, pollution, trade, and dietary demand. Environmental Research Letters 11(9):095007.

5 Thakrar, S. K., S. Balasubramanian, P. J. Adams, I. M. L. Azevedo, N. Z. Muller, S. N. Pandis, S. Polasky, C. Arden Pope III, A. L. Robinson, J. S. Apte, C. W. Tessum, J. D. Marshall, and J. D. Hill. 2020. Reducing mortality from air pollution in the United States by targeting specific emission sources. Environmental Science and Technology Letters 7:639−645.

6 Tian, H., C. Lu, P. Ciais, A. M. Michalak, J. G. Canadell, E. Saikawa, D. N. Huntzinger, K. R. Gurney, S. Sitch, B. Zhang, J. Yang, P. Bousquet, L. Bruhwiler, G. Chen, E. Dlugokencky, P. Friedlingstein, J. Melillo, S. Pan, B. Poulter, R. Prinn, M. Saunois, C. R. Schwalm, and S. C. Wofsy. 2016. The terrestrial biosphere as a net source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Nature 531:225–228.

Climate change will further boost the amount of nitrous oxide released into the environment. 7 As the use of nitrogen-intensive crops expands and moves into areas previously too cold to support such crops, nitrogen losses to the atmosphere will increase. Extreme events such as droughts and intense rainfall will depress the uptake of nitrogen by plants, causing more nitrogen to enter the broader environment. Longer growing seasons and warmer winters will lead to more mineralization of nitrogen by microorganisms from insoluble organic forms to soluble and biologically available forms. Where fertilization rates exceed what crops need, the emissions of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere from unused nitrogen increase. 8 For example, when growing switchgrass for biofuels, the production of nitrous oxide from excess fertilizer application could halve the climate benefits. 9

Tailoring fertilizer rate to crop type and productivity could help avoid such losses. 10 For example, crop yield maps can reveal areas within fields that routinely have lower productivity than other areas. These areas could be fertilized at lower rates so that unused nitrogen does not pollute water and the atmosphere. Alternatively, fields could be subdivided so that low-yielding cropland is used for conservation and bioenergy production. Winter cover crops could be used to scavenge nitrogen, which is especially effective given that most nitrogen is lost in the off season. However, none of these solutions is sufficient to solve the problem, and all require incentivization if they are to take place.

Barriers to reducing the use of nitrogen are largely social and economic rather than technical. Today, agricultural production is aimed toward high yields, not toward greenhouse gas mitigation or nitrate conservation. However, evidence indicates that agriculture could be managed to maximize environmental benefits with only a minimal reduction in yields. 11 For example, when the European Union introduced a directive in the 1990s that requires farmers to show how much fertilizer they need to produce their crops, farmers began using less nitrogen while yields continued to increase.

7 Robertson, G. P., and P. M. Vitousek. 2009. Nitrogen in agriculture: Balancing the cost of an essential resource. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34:97–125.

8 McSwiney, C. P., and G. P. Robertson. 2005. Non-linear response of N2O flux to incremental fertilizer addition in a continuous maize (Zea mays L.) cropping system. Global Change Biology 11(10):1712–1719.

9 Ruan, L., A. K. Bhardwaj, S. K. Hamilton, and G. P. Robertson. 2016. Nitrogen fertilization challenges the climate benefit of cellulosic biofuels. Environmental Research Letters 11:064007.

10 Millar, N., A. Urrea, K. Kahmark, I. Shcherbak, G. P. Robertson, and I. Ortiz-Monasterio. 2018. Nitrous oxide (N2O) flux responds exponentially to nitrogen fertilizer in irrigated wheat in the Yaqui Valley, Mexico. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 261:125–132.

11 Snapp, S. S., R. G. Smith, and G. P. Robertson. 2015. Designing cropping systems for ecosystem services. Pp. 378–408 in S. K. Hamilton, J. E. Doll, and G. P. Robertson, eds. The Ecology of Agricultural Landscapes: Long-Term Research on the Path to Sustainability . New York: Oxford University Press.

A GRICULTURE AND B IODIVERSITY

In addition to its effects on climate, the expansion of agriculture has caused massive losses in biodiversity around the world: natural habitats have been converted to farms and pastures, pesticides and fertilizers have polluted the environment, and soils have been degraded. Many plant and animal populations will face extinction in future decades as land clearing and agricultural production increase. 12 Agricultural ecosystems have also become less diverse as the use of crop monocultures has expanded. Even in developed countries such as the United States, directives to use more land for biofuels have caused millions of acres to be converted to monoculture crops, like corn, that had not been grown on that land before.

As with climate change, the interactions of agriculture and biodiversity run both ways. Greater biodiversity benefits agriculture through such effects as an increase in pollinators, the presence of species that reduce pests, and better soil quality. For example, work in ecology has demonstrated a strong link between biodiversity and the stability and productivity of ecosystems. 13 , 14 , 15

Similarly, a greater diversity of crop types within agricultural systems can improve national food security and stability. 16 At a national level, some crops do better in warm years while others do better in cool years, or in wetter and drier years. By averaging across crop yields, greater crop diversity increases the year-to-year stability of national yields and the reliability of food production. Box 2-1 looks at some of the issues involved in protecting biodiversity while maintaining agricultural yields.

12 Tilman, D., M. Clark, D. R. Williams, K. Kimmel, S. Polasky, and C. Packer. 2017. Future threats to biodiversity and pathways to their prevention. Nature 546:73–81.

13 Tilman, D., and J. Downing. 1994. Biodiversity and stability in grasslands. Nature 367:363–365.

14 Isbell, F., D. Craven, J. Connolly, M. Loreau, B. Schmid, C. Beierkuhnlein, T. M. Bezemer, C. Bonin, H. Bruelheide, E. de Luca, A. Ebeling, J. N. Griffin, Q. Guo, Y. Hautier, A. Hector, A. Jentsch, J. Kreyling, V. Lanta, P. Manning, S. T. Meyer, A. S. Mori, S. Naeem, P. A. Niklaus, H. W. Polley, P. B. Reich, C. Roscher, E. W. Seabloom, M. D. Smith, M. P. Thakur, D. Tilman, B. F. Tracy, W. H. van der Putten, J. van Ruijven, A. Weigelt, W. W. Weisser, B. Wilsey, and N. Eisenhauer. 2015. Biodiversity increases the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate extremes. Nature 526:574–577.

15 Cardinale, B. J., K. Gross, K. Fritschie, P. Flombaum, J. W. Fox, C. Rixen, J. van Ruijven, P. B. Reich, M. Scherer-Lorenzen, and B. J. Wilsey. 2013. Biodiversity simultaneously enhances the production and stability of community biomass, but the effects are independent. Ecology 94(8):1697–1707.

16 Renard, D., and D. Tilman. 2019. National food production stabilized by crop diversity. Nature 571:257–260.

T HE C URRENT T RAJECTORY

As global population and per capita incomes continue to grow, demand for food will increase. 17 Growing more crops for consumption by both people and livestock will require increasing yields on existing land or converting more wildland to cropland. Increasing yields on existing land implies decreasing the gaps between how much a given area of land is capable of producing and how much it produces today, which in the past has usually entailed increasing the use of fertilizer, irrigations, new kinds of cultivars, and other inputs to agriculture. But more inputs to agriculture have historically resulted in greater negative impacts on biodiversity and the environment. In addition, the yields of some crops appear to be reaching their limits as previous increases have leveled off. 18

Agriculture will continue to adapt to new environmental conditions, as it has in the past. For example, the planting of maize has moved away from the hottest regions and toward cooler regions, which has reduced the negative effects of temperature increases. 19 In contrast, soybean production has moved toward warmer regions that boost yields. Since the early 1980s, planting of maize begins more than 10 days earlier on average and grain filling is more than 1 week longer, with a resulting increase in yields. 20

17 Tilman, D., C. Balzer, J. Hill, and B. L. Befort. 2011. Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(50):20260–20264.

18 Grassini, P., K. M. Eskridge, and K. G. Cassman. 2013. Distinguishing between yield advances and yield plateaus in historical crop production trends. Nature Communications 4:2918.

19 Sloat, L. L., S. J. Davis, J. S. Gerber, F. C. Moore, D. K. Ray, P. C. West, and N. D. Mueller. 2020. Climate adaptation by crop migration. Nature Communications 11:1243.

20 Butler, E. E., N. D. Mueller, and P. Huybers. 2018. Peculiarly pleasant weather for US maize. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115(47):11935–11940.

Farmers will continue to manage crops to minimize or avoid harms to yields caused by changed conditions and take advantage of new opportunities. They will choose different crops to grow, which will result in the migration of crops across landscapes. Plants and animals will be bred to be more resistant to warmer temperatures, increased humidity, and other environmental changes. Many practices can be optimized and scaled up to advance such adaptations, including investments in infrastructure, capacity building, decision systems, market connectivity, and supply chains. Given that the drivers of change are global, adaptation will also need to take place from the perspective of the global food system.

However, it will be important to understand the limits of agricultural systems to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Farmers, for example, face severe and increasing economic pressures that are not directly related to environmental changes. Agriculture is a powerful system, but post-farm industries are even more powerful. The economic value added to a nation’s gross domestic product from farming is typically a small percentage of the value added by the entire food system, including processing, distribution, and retail. In the United Kingdom, agriculture accounts for only about 8 percent of the value added in the country’s overall food system. 21 Food and drink manufacturing, wholesaling, and retailing, in contrast, account for 59 percent, while cafés, restaurants, and other food sales venues account for another 29 percent. Similarly, in the United States, farms receive about 12 cents of every dollar spent by U.S. consumers. At the same time, prices for major commodities like corn, soybeans, and wheat in the United States have dropped to historical lows. While these low prices benefit consumers, the lack of revenue flowing to farmers is a major reason why farmers in these countries and elsewhere rely heavily on subsidies, while conservation receives substantially less governmental support.

The dynamics of the global food system are further challenged by imbalances among urban and rural areas, among countries, and among regions. Countries such as the United States produce more food than they require, while other countries must rely on imports to meet their needs. Mega-cities in the global South have become reliant on the global commodity trade, and their environmental footprints are rising at an even faster rate than their populations. Many aspects of the global food system have not been stress tested against environmental or social shocks that can be expected to occur in the future.

in addition to the demands made of land to produce food, pressure will grow to use land for the production of bioenergy and to sequester carbon. This pressure could increase the conversion of land to agriculture, the degradation of already farmed land, and food insecurity. Integrating bioenergy production and carbon sequestration into sustainably managed landscapes could produce fewer adverse side effects and have other positive co-benefits, such as salinity control, enhanced biodiversity, and reduced eutrophication. However, it will be necessary to figure out how contrasting land uses can work together in complementary ways.

21 Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. 2019. Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2019 . London, UK: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

An underlying question is how land ought to be used. 22 Land can provide food, habitat, bioenergy, climate change mitigation, amenities, housing, timber, and other services and resources. Agriculture is part of much broader systems that have many actors, many sectors, and many needs. Food security can mean many different things, including food nationalism, self-sufficiency, defense, control, resilience, risk management, capacity, and sovereignty. Analyzing and rationalizing these many services will require a multidisciplinary approach and inclusive consultation with stakeholders.

The 2009 Royal Society report Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Global Agriculture , adapting an earlier analysis, 23 defined sustainability as having four attributes: 24

• Persistence: the capacity to continue to deliver desired outputs over long periods of time (human generations), thus conferring predictability
• Resilience: the capacity to absorb, utilize, or even benefit from perturbations (shocks and stresses) and thus persist without qualitative changes in structure
• Autarchy: the capacity to deliver desired outputs from inputs and resources (factors of production) acquired from within key system boundaries
• Benevolence: the capacity to produce desired outputs (e.g., food, fiber, fuel, oil) while sustaining the functioning of ecosystem services and not causing depletion of natural capital (e.g., minerals, biodiversity, soil, clean water)

Similarly, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations established five principles that must be pursued to make agriculture sustainable: 25

• Improve efficiency in the use of resources
• Conserve, protect, and enhance natural resources
• Protect and improve rural livelihoods, equity, and social well-being
• Strengthen the resilience of people, communities, and ecosystems to climate change and market volatility
• Promote responsible and effective governance mechanisms

Given these objectives, the challenge of sustainable agriculture is how to produce sufficient and nutritious food for all people with low environmental impacts. As discussed in the remainder of this summary, many deliberative levers of change can be used to address this challenge, including increased agricultural efficiency and yields, smarter land use, better use of markets and trade, reductions of

22 Lang, T. 2020. Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them . London, UK: Penguin.

23 Pretty, J. N. 2008. Agricultural sustainability: Concepts, principles and evidence . Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363(1491):447–465.

24 Royal Society. 2009. Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Global Agriculture. London, UK: Royal Society.

25 FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2014. Building a Common Vision for Sustainable Food and Agriculture: Principles and Approaches . Rome, Italy: FAO.

waste, and shifts in diets. In addition, forced levers of change, such as the coronavirus pandemic that gripped the world in 2020, can be expected to change food systems, though often in ways that are difficult to predict.

T HE N EED FOR C HANGE

Under a business-as-usual scenario, the deleterious environmental effects of current food systems will continue to increase. Higher levels of food production will require more fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation and more extensive resource extraction from the land and sea. This will be the case in places where growing populations, increased demand, and existing yield gaps will exert pressures to convert more wildland to cropland in particular (see Figure 2-3 ). Such an approach would bring more air and water pollution, increases in greenhouse gas emissions, greater degradation and erosion of soils, more conversion of natural habitats to agriculture, greater threats to biodiversity, and intensified competition for land and other resource inputs. Given the already substantial effects of agriculture on biodiversity and the environment, such a future is not sustainable.

The need for sustainable agriculture is becoming ever more significant. The world's population is still increasing, requiring more from our agricultural systems. Malnutrition and diet-related illnesses are present in nearly all societies. At the same time, agriculture plays a significant role in some of the biggest environmental challenges that humanity is facing, including the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and the pollution of our soil, water, and air. The need to balance the growing demand for nutritious food with these environmental threats is a complex issue, and ensuring sustainable food systems will require a collaborative effort from many different communities.

These issues were addressed during the US-UK Scientific Forum on Sustainable Agriculture held in Washington, DC, on March 5-6, 2020. Organized by the National Academy of Sciences and the United Kingdom's Royal Society, the forum brought together leading scientists, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in agricultural sciences, food policy, biodiversity, and environmental science (among other specialties). The forum provided an opportunity for members of these research communities to build multidisciplinary and international collaborations that can inform solutions to a broad set of problems. This publication summarizes the presentations of the forum.

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Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply

There are over two million farms in the United States, and more than half the nation’s land is used for agricultural production. 1 The number of farms has been slowly declining since the 1930s, 2 though the average farm size has remained about the same since the early 1970s. 3 Agriculture also extends beyond farms. It includes industries such as food service and food manufacturing.

Drought. Since early 2020, the U.S. Southwest has been experiencing one of the most severe long-term droughts of the past 1,200 years. Multiple seasons of record low precipitation and near-record high temperatures were the main triggers of the drought. 37

Wildfires. Some tribal communities are particularly vulnerable to wildfires due to their often-remote locations and lack of firefighting resources and staff. 38 In addition, because wildfire smoke can travel long distances from the source fire, its effects can be far reaching, especially for people with certain medical conditions or who spend long periods of time outside.

Decreased crop yields. Rising temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations may increase some crop yields, but the yields of major commodity crops (such as corn, rice, and oats) are expected to be lower than they would in a future without climate change. 39

Heat stress. Dairy cows are especially sensitive to heat stress, which can affect their appetite and milk production. In 2010, heat stress lowered annual U.S. dairy production by an estimated $1.2 billion. 40

Soil erosion. Heavy rainfalls can lead to more soil erosion, which is a major environmental threat to sustainable crop production. 41

Agriculture is very sensitive to weather and climate. 4 It also relies heavily on land, water, and other natural resources that climate affects. 5   While climate changes (such as in temperature, precipitation, and frost timing) could lengthen the growing season or allow different crops to be grown in some regions, 6 it will also make agricultural practices more difficult in others.

The effects of climate change on agriculture will depend on the rate and severity of the change, as well as the degree to which farmers and ranchers can adapt. 7 U.S. agriculture already has many practices in place to adapt to a changing climate, including crop rotation and integrated pest management . A good deal of research is also under way to help prepare for a changing climate.

Learn more about climate change and agriculture:

Top Climate Impacts on Agriculture

Agriculture and the economy, environmental justice and equity, what we can do, related resources, the link between agriculture and climate change.

Climate change can affect crops, livestock, soil and water resources, rural communities, and agricultural workers. However, the agriculture sector also emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that contribute to climate change. 

Read more about greenhouse gas emissions on the Basics of Climate Change  page.

Learn how the agriculture sector is reducing methane emissions from livestock waste through the AgSTAR program . For a more technical look at emissions from the agriculture sector, take a look at EPA's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory chapter on agriculture activities in the United States . 

Climate change may affect agriculture at both local and regional scales. Key impacts are described in this section.

1. Changes in Agricultural Productivity 

Climate change can make conditions better or worse for growing crops in different regions. For example, changes in temperature, rainfall, and frost-free days are leading to longer growing seasons in almost every state. 8  A longer growing season can have both positive and negative impacts for raising food. Some farmers may be able to plant longer-maturing crops or more crop cycles altogether, while others may need to provide more irrigation over a longer, hotter growing season. Air pollution may also damage crops, plants, and forests. 9  For example, when plants absorb large amounts of ground-level ozone, they experience reduced photosynthesis, slower growth, and higher sensitivity to diseases. 10  

Climate change can also increase the threat of wildfires . Wildfires pose major risks to farmlands, grasslands, and rangelands. 11  Temperature and precipitation changes will also very likely expand the occurrence and range of insects, weeds, and diseases. 12  This could lead to a greater need for weed and pest control. 13  

Pollination is vital to more than 100 crops grown in the United States. 14  Warmer temperatures and changing precipitation can affect when plants bloom and when pollinators , such as bees and butterflies, come out. 15  If mismatches occur between when plants flower and when pollinators emerge, pollination could decrease. 16

2. Impacts to Soil and Water Resources

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of heavy precipitation in the United States, which can harm crops by eroding soil and depleting soil nutrients. 18  Heavy rains can also increase agricultural runoff into oceans, lakes, and streams. 19  This runoff can harm water quality. 

When coupled with warming water temperatures brought on by climate change, runoff can lead to depleted oxygen levels in water bodies. This is known as hypoxia . Hypoxia can kill fish and shellfish. It can also affect their ability to find food and habitat, which in turn could harm the coastal societies and economies that depend on those ecosystems. 20  

Sea level rise and storms also pose threats to coastal agricultural communities. These threats include erosion, agricultural land losses, and saltwater intrusion, which can contaminate water supplies. 21  Climate change is expected to worsen these threats. 22  

3. Health Challenges to Agricultural Workers and Livestock

Agricultural workers face several climate-related health risks. These include exposures to heat and other extreme weather, more pesticide exposure due to expanded pest presence, disease-carrying pests like mosquitos and ticks, and degraded air quality. 23  Language barriers, lack of health care access, and other factors can compound these risks. 24  Heat and humidity can also affect the health and productivity of animals raised for meat, milk, and eggs. 25   

For more specific examples of climate change impacts in your region, please see the National Climate Assessment .

Agriculture contributed more than $1.1 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product in 2019. 26  The sector accounts for 10.9 percent of total U.S. employment—more than 22 million jobs. 27  These include not only on-farm jobs, but also jobs in food service and other related industries. Food service makes up the largest share of these jobs at 13 million. 28  

Cattle, corn, dairy products, and soybeans are the top income-producing commodities . 29  The United States is also a key exporter of soybeans, other plant products, tree nuts, animal feeds, beef, and veal. 30

Many hired crop farmworkers are foreign-born people from Mexico and Central America. 31  Most hired crop farmworkers are not migrant workers; instead, they work at a single location within 75 miles of their homes. 32  Many hired farmworkers can be more at risk of climate health threats due to social factors, such as language barriers and health care access.

Climate change could affect food security for some households in the country. Most U.S. households are currently food secure . This means that all people in the household have enough food to live active, healthy lives. 33  However, 13.8 million U.S. households (about one-tenth of all U.S. households) were food insecure at least part of the time in 2020. 34  U.S. households with above-average food insecurity include those with an income below the poverty threshold, those headed by a single woman, and those with Black or Hispanic owners and lessees. 35

Climate change can also affect food security for some Indigenous peoples in Hawai'i and other U.S.-affiliated Pacific islands. Climate impacts like sea level rise and more intense storms can affect the production of crops like taro, breadfruit, and mango. 36 These crops are often key sources of nutrition and may also have cultural and economic importance.

We can reduce the impact of climate change on agriculture in many ways, including the following:

• Incorporate climate-smart farming methods. Farmers can use climate forecasting tools, plant cover crops, and take other steps to help manage climate-related production threats. 
• Join AgSTAR. Livestock producers can get help in recovering methane , a potent greenhouse gas, from biogas created when manure decomposes.
• Reduce runoff. Agricultural producers can strategically apply fertilizers, keep their animals out of streams, and take more actions to reduce nutrient-laden runoff. 
• Boost crop resistance. Adopt research-proven ways to reduce the impacts of climate change on crops and livestock , such as reducing pesticide use and improving pollination.
• Prevent food waste. Stretch your dollar and shrink your carbon footprint by planning  your shopping trips carefully and properly storing food . Donate nutritious, untouched food to food banks and those in need.

See additional actions you can take, as well as steps that companies can take, on EPA’s What You Can Do About Climate Change page.

Related Climate Indicators

Learn more about some of the key indicators of climate change related to this sector from EPA’s Climate Change Indicators :

• Seasonal Temperature
• Freeze-Thaw Conditions
• Length of Growing Season
• Growing Degree Days
• Fifth National Climate Assessment, Chapter 11: “Agriculture, Food Systems, and Rural Communities."
• National Agricultural Center . Provides agriculture-related news from all of EPA through a free email subscription service.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service . Produces research, information, and outlook products to enhance people’s understanding of agriculture and food issues. 
• USDA Environmental Quality Incentives Program . Provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers to address natural resource concerns.
• USDA Climate Hubs . Connects farmers, ranchers, and land managers with tools to help them adapt to climate change impacts in their area.
• USDA Rural Development . Promotes economic development in rural communities. Provides loans, grants, technical assistance, and education to agricultural producers and rural residents and organizations.
• National Integrated Drought Information System . Coordinates U.S. drought monitoring, forecasting, and planning through a multi-agency partnership. The U.S. Drought Monitor assesses droughts on a weekly basis.
• Sustainable Management of Food . Provides tools and resources for preventing and reducing wasted food and its associated impacts over the entire life cycle. 
• Resources, Waste, and Climate Change . Learn how reducing waste decreases our carbon footprint and what business, communities, and individuals can do.

1  U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Economic Research Service (ERS). (2022). Ag and food statistics: Charting the essentials. Farming and farm income . Retrieved 3/18/2022.

2  USDA, ERS. (2022). Ag and food statistics: Charting the essentials. Farming and farm income . Retrieved 3/18/2022.

3  USDA, ERS. (2022). Ag and food statistics: Charting the essentials. Farming and farm income . Retrieved 3/18/2022.

4  Walsh, M.K., et al. (2020). Climate indicators for agriculture . USDA Technical Bulletin 1953. Washington, DC, p. 1. 

5  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 393. 

6  Walsh, M.K., et al. (2020). Climate indicators for agriculture . USDA Technical Bulletin 1953. Washington, DC, p. 22. 

7  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 393.

8  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 401. 

9  Nolte, C.G., et al. (2018). Ch. 13: Air quality . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 513. 

10  EPA. (2022). Ecosystem effects of ozone pollution . Retrieved 3/18/2022. 

11  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 401.

12  Ziska, L., et al. (2016). Ch. 7: Food safety, nutrition, and distribution . In: The impacts of climate change on human health in the United States: A scientific assessment . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 197.  

13  Ziska, L., et al. (2016). Ch. 7: Food safety, nutrition, and distribution . In: The impacts of climate change on human health in the United States: A scientific assessment . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 197.  

14  USDA. Pollinators . Retrieved 3/18/2022. 

15  Walsh, M.K., et al. (2020). Climate indicators for agriculture . USDA Technical Bulletin 1953. Washington, DC, p. 20.

16  Walsh, M.K., et al. (2020). Climate indicators for agriculture . USDA Technical Bulletin 1953. Washington, DC, p. 40.

17  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 405.

18  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 409.

19  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 409.

20  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 405.

21  Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 405.

22 Gowda, P., et al. (2018). Ch. 10: Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 405.

23  Gamble, J.L., et al. (2016). Ch. 9: Populations of concern . In: The impacts of climate change on human health in the United States: A scientific assessment . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 247–286. 

24  Hernandez, T., and S. Gabbard. (2019). Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) 2015–2016: A demographic and employment profile of United States farmworkers . Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Washington, DC, pp. 10–11 and pp. 40–45.  

25  Walsh, M. K., et al. (2020). Climate indicators for agriculture . USDA Technical Bulletin 1953. Washington, DC, p. 20. 

26  USDA, ERS. (2022). Ag and food statistics: Charting the essentials . Retrieved 3/18/2022.

27  USDA, ERS. (2022). Ag and food statistics: Charting the essentials . Retrieved 3/18/2022.

28  USDA, ERS. (2022). Ag and food statistics: Charting the essentials . Retrieved 3/18/2022.

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30  USDA, ERS. (2022). Farm income and wealth statistics/cash receipts by commodity . Retrieved 3/18/2022. 

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Article Contents

1 introduction, 2 research framework and data preparation, 3 knowledge-mapping model, 4 conclusions, conflicts of interest.

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The impact of agricultural chemical inputs on environment: global evidence from informetrics analysis and visualization

Lu Zhang and Chengxi Yan contribute equally to this work.

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Lu Zhang, Chengxi Yan, Qing Guo, Junbiao Zhang, Jorge Ruiz-Menjivar, The impact of agricultural chemical inputs on environment: global evidence from informetrics analysis and visualization, International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies , Volume 13, Issue 4, December 2018, Pages 338–352, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijlct/cty039

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This paper identifies and analyzes salient research frontiers, research hotspots and high-frequency terms using aggregated and multiple-source literature records related to the topic of ‘effects of agricultural chemical inputs on the environment.’ We employ a set of Informetrics Theory methods (i.e. document co-citation analysis, document clustering and co-words analysis via co-occurrence network of subject terms) for our analysis. Our findings suggest that in the past 30 years, research about this topic can be divided into three stages, namely the early stage (1990–99), the middle stage (2000–07) and the late stage (2008–16). Research directions for the three identified stages deal primarily with (a) the effects of pesticides and veterinary drugs on the environment, (b) the influence of fertilizer application on the environment and food safety and (c) the technologies and strategies to monitor and control the impact of agricultural chemical inputs on the environment. Particularly, we find that research in the topic of interest primarily focusses on agricultural scenarios of food crop production and fish farming. In terms of agricultural chemical inputs, major attention is given to pesticides and fertilizers. With respect to the impact of agricultural inputs, pollutant formation and transferring process, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, impact assessment indicators, as well as pollution prevention and reduction strategies are the most researched areas, and soil and water constitute the main researched environmental media. Finally, institutions and organization based in North America, East Asia and Europe are main research contributors on this topic.

Agricultural inputs broadly refer to the materials used or added in the process of agricultural production and include biological inputs, chemical inputs, and agricultural facilities and equipment. In particular, agricultural chemical inputs denote the different types of chemical applications in agricultural production, such as pesticides (including natural and biological pesticides), chemical fertilizers, veterinary drugs and feed additives, among others.

Agricultural management practices—for example, an increased use of agricultural chemicals or fertilizers—are often evaluated based on their benefits for economic efficiencies in production (e.g. reduction in total production costs and increased production yield) while less attention is generally given to their potential environmental effects [ 1 ]. For example, pesticide and fertilizer application plays a vital role in increasing agricultural production and ensuring the supply of agricultural products. Pesticide spraying can significantly reduce or offset the economic costs from plant diseases, insect pests, and weeds on agricultural production and fertilizer application can provide a variety of nutrients required for the growth of crops and for an increased yield in production. However, many countries have reported alarming residues of agricultural chemicals in soil, water, air, agricultural products, and even in human blood and adipose tissue [ 2 , 3 ].

Research suggests that the massive use of inorganic fertilizers world-wide is associated with the accumulation of contaminants, e.g. arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), fluorine (F), lead (Pb) and mercury (Hg) in agricultural soils [ 1 ]. In the USA, according to a survey of 51 major river basins and aquifer systems by the US Geological Survey, pesticides were detected 97% of the time in samples from stream water in agricultural areas [ 4 ]. In Japan, pesticides were frequently detected in the air of residential environments and childcare facilities following the application of pesticides—this is consistent with the findings that outside pesticide applications are major contributors to indoor air pollution in agricultural communities [ 5 ].

In most developing countries, the pollution caused by agricultural chemicals is even more serious [ 6 , 7 ]. The usage volume of fertilizers and pesticides in China has been the recorded as the highest in the world. Specifically, its chemical fertilizer usage volume has reached more than 59 million tons and pesticide more than 1.8 million tons [ 8 ]. Alarmingly, the total utilization rate of fertilizers and pesticides is only ~35% [ 9 ], and thus, any fertilizer and pesticide losses are likely to contaminate soil, surface water and groundwater. In China, estimates indicate that contaminated arable land area is ~150 million acres, accounting for 8.3% of the total arable land in the nation [ 10 ]. In addition, nearly half of the groundwater resources have been inordinately polluted by agricultural chemicals, which seriously threaten the safety of drinking water in China, especially in rural areas. [ 11 ] reports that consequences of an increased use of agricultural chemicals transcend the environment. Farmers in developing countries are experiencing, either short-term or long-term, health effects from exposures to agricultural chemicals, including severe symptoms (e.g. headaches, skin rashes, eye irritations) and some chronic effects (e.g. cancer, endocrine disruption, birth defects).

Policy makers recognize that the excessive and unsystematic application of agrichemical inputs, pesticides and fertilizers in particular, is an obstacle to the development of sustainable agriculture, and poses a threat to the environment and humans alike. Several countries have enacted policies to regulate the usage volume and types of agricultural chemicals [ 12 , 13 ]. For instance, in the USA, the 1972 Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act (FEPCA) and subsequent amendments acknowledge the negative effects of pesticide applications on both the environment and human health, regulate the use of pesticides and enforce compliance against banned pesticide products. The 2003, European Union Regulation EC No. 2003/2003 establishes that electrical conductivity fertilizers should meet a specific criteria in terms of nutrient content, safety and absence of adverse effects to the environment [ 14 ]. In 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture introduced the ‘Action to Achieve Zero Growth in the Application of fertilizer’ and ‘Action Plan for Zero Growth in the Application of Pesticide’, which both set specific goals, strategies, plans and relevant safeguard measures for controlling the usage of agricultural chemicals by year 2020 [ 15 ].

Scholars in the fields of agriculture, chemistry, environmental science, ecology, medicine and economics have also been highly concerned about the threat of excessively using agricultural chemicals to the environment and human health. In the last two decades, researchers have mainly focused on the following four areas regarding the increased use of agrichemicals and their impact. First, prior literature has explored the pollution derived from using pesticides and chemical fertilizers for the natural environment (i.e. soil microbial community response, agricultural water pollution, agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural fertilizer loss) [ 16 – 18 ]. Secondly, researchers have investigated the effects of using pesticides and fertilizers on agricultural production (i.e. soil fertility, farmland diseases, farmland weeds and farmland pests) [ 16 , 18 , 19 ]. Thirdly, other research has focused on the impact of using pesticides and fertilizers for society (i.e. social economy, food security and human health) [ 20 – 22 ]. Finally, extant literature has explored the interactions among chemical inputs, crop yield and the ecological environment [ 23 , 24 ].

Previous literature review studies documenting the impact of agricultural chemicals on the environment have normally employed qualitative methods (e.g. manual investigation and literature classification) rather than quantitative methods (e.g. Informetrics analysis and visualization), and have used limited sources of data (e.g. key documents and reports) to perform the reviews. In addition, the research scale for most review studies has been narrow, focusing on a specific type of agricultural chemical input (e.g. pesticides or fertilizers) and analyzing its impact on a single environmental element (e.g. soil, water or air). To our knowledge, only a few scholars have reviewed the impact of agricultural chemicals on water, soil and human health conjunctively [ 1 , 25 , 26 ].

The present study addresses these limitations and utilizes a robust quantitative approach (i.e. information metrology) to exploit the data richness from aggregated and multiple-source records to perform the review. We aim to systematically and objectively present the research evolution of the literature conducted on the macro-environmental effects induced by excessive use chemical inputs (i.e. fertilizers and pesticides) in agriculture (i.e. fertilizers and pesticides) and to provide further insight into future research directions or intersections that may of interest for researchers and policy makers.

2.1 Research framework

The field of Informetrics deals with the quantitative analysis of information, aiming to reveal patterns and associations of information objects, their production, structure and dissemination [ 27 ]. Citation analysis is a core method in Informetrics. With feature statistics, citation analysis can effectively find common domains of knowledge for analyzed records. Based on citation analysis, generalized Informetrics—a combination of statistical description, mathematical model and machine learning—has become a cross-discipline approach for scientific knowledge evaluation, and includes popular methods, such as ‘co-word network,’ ‘clustering Analysis’ and ‘mapping knowledge domain.’

Co-word network is a relational network based on the co-occurrence of keywords or subject terms in the literature; this method belongs to the catalog of ‘Content Analysis Method’. Cluster analysis comes from the notion of automatic categorization for similar abstract objects based on the theory of machine learning, and aims to cluster analogous members and divide unrelated objects. Mapping knowledge domain enables to reveal relevant research frontiers and frameworks, and intuitively demonstrates the development process of a discipline or knowledge using graphical representations and tools.

2.2 Data retrieval and preprocessing

First, we ascertain scientific subject terms through the platform ‘LCSH’ (Library of Congress Subject Headings) from which candidate words are examined using query entries via the function ‘LC Linked Data Service’. Second, we conduct the preprocessing stage (i.e. data cleaning, knowledge representation, formation of co-word matrix) using 16 459 articles retrieved from the core data set of web of science (WOS). The result of the latter phase is the development and creation of a knowledge-mapping model with focus on the main theme of ‘agricultural chemical inputs and environmental impact.’

Query reformulation is a critical phase of searching and collecting target articles [ 28 ]. In this paper, the preliminary query formulation is formed according to the integration of candidate words, including ‘agricultural chemicals’, ‘farm chemicals’, ‘pesticides’, ‘fertilizers’, ‘fertilizers’, ‘manures’ and ‘environment’. Through associated retrieval by the ‘LC Linked Data Service’ tool, ‘agricultural chemicals’, ‘pesticides’, ‘fertilizers’ and ‘manures’ are identified as conception topics. ‘Agricultural chemicals’ is the extension of the concept terms ‘pesticides’ and ‘fertilizers’ (i.e. broader term relationship). ‘Manures’, by contrast, is a narrower term for ‘pesticides’ (i.e. narrower term relationship). ‘Fertilizers’ and ‘farm chemicals’ should not be taken as independent subject terms as they are lexical variants of ‘fertilizers’ and ‘agricultural chemicals.’ Therefore, for this study the independent subject terms are as follows: ‘agricultural chemicals’, ‘pesticides’, ‘fertilizers’ and ‘environment’.

After identifying the subject terms, we scanned selected databases (i.e. SCI-E, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S and CPCI-SSH) in WOS. Specifically, the query reformulation of term collocation is ‘(TOPIC: (agricultural chemical) AND TOPIC: (environment)) OR (TOPIC: (pesticides) AND TOPIC: (environment)) OR (TOPIC: (fertilizers) AND TOPIC: (environment))’. The time span used for this query is from 1990 to 2016 (last updated on 21 October 2016).

The data preprocessing phase aims to unify inconsistent formats and units of data from different systems or platforms [ 29 ]. This paper adopts three methods (i.e. data cleaning, knowledge representation and automation formation of co-word matrix) to conduct the data preprocessing. For data cleaning and in anticipation that WOS records may be subject to noise or missing data, we conduct an artificial exclusion and consistency check by removing unrecognizable keywords with high frequency, such as ‘u 238’ or ‘34’. Then, for knowledge representation, we use citation network analysis via CitesSpace and formed 6 079 nodes and 5 217 edges. Finally, based on the revised pagerank index, we employ the Gelphi platform to form a co-work matrix, which is an efficient method for analyzing and exploring potential rules and interplay amid various literature records.

Constructing a knowledge-mapping model for the topic ‘the impact of agricultural chemicals on environment’ can provide further guidance on the research directions, hot topics and research frontiers, as well as on the distributions and discipline evolution. Figure 1 shows the knowledge-mapping model established in this paper. The part A of Figure 1 shows a green highlighted area in the middle of the network called ‘giant component’ and represents the tightest and most stable part of the overall knowledge network about ‘the impact of agricultural chemicals on environment’. This paper analyzes different aspects of the ‘giant component’ network. Special attention is paid to mining and interpreting the distinctive nodes in order to further understand the knowledge baseline and research frontiers for the topic of interest. Using clustering and visualization analysis with the construction of a co-word matrix, this study offers a summary of the main and timely areas of interest or concern, as well as major objects and research methods used in the research of this topic. The following section provides the results for a set of Informetrics Theory-based analyses: document co-citation analysis, document citation-clustering and co-words analysis via co-occurrence network of subject terms.

Global and macro-scope view based on citation analysis.

3.1 Co-citation analysis

Citation analysis explores the citation relationship and co-occurrence patterns of original papers and their references. It aims to reveal the knowledge connection, knowledge structure and knowledge rules of the target scientific area. A time-dimensional visualized intellectual landscape is constructed and provided in Part B of Figure 1 . In the past 30 years, researches on the environmental impacts from agricultural chemical inputs could be divided into three stages, namely early stage from 1990 to1999 (B1), middle stage from 2000 to 2007 (B2) and late stage from 2008 to 2016 (B3). Using the results from citation analysis, we identify two proliferous authors, Yi-fan Li and Dana W. Kolpin, for the research topic of interest (i.e. the impact of agricultural chemical inputs on the environment). These two authors were selected based on the number of authored and published journal articles and their consistent contribution to the aforementioned research topic in the last three decades. For illustration purposes, we use their research to exemplify the evolution of the lines of inquiry and investigation in the discipline over the three identified stages.

As shown, in the early stage, researches mainly focused on the application of agricultural chemicals, pollutants emissions and the degree of concentration in the environment. The measurement of pollution in the environment is the salient line of inquiry in this early stage. For example, a distinguished scholar in research related to the topic of interest is Yi-Fan Li, a scientist in the Atmospheric Quality Institute, Dalian Maritime University and Harbin Institute of Technology in Canada. For decades, he has dedicated his career to study the effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) on the ecological environment. In the first stage, articles authored or co-authored by Li focus on the pollution degree of POPs, the usage rate of hexachlorocyclohexane and their impact on the environment [ 30 – 32 ]. Another salient author in the early stage in Dana W. Kolpin, head of the US Geological Survey’s Emerging Contaminants Project, who has dedicated decades to the investigation of how pharmaceuticals and other contaminants move through the environment. In the first stage, his researches mainly focused on assessing the levels of selected pesticides and their metabolites in groundwater or streams in the USA [ 33 – 38 ].

Articles published within the period of the middle stage focused on to the analysis of influence mechanisms, including pollutant generation mechanism, source analysis, transmission channel and source sink relationship. During this stage, Li and colleagues studied the gridded emission inventories of hexachlorocyclohexane and the aspects that stimulate the transport of hexachlorocyclohexane. His research concentrated in exploring the sources and transport mechanism of POPs in the environment [ 39 – 42 ]. Similarly, Kolpin, in the second stage, mainly focused on the environmental occurrence, transport and the ultimate fate of many synthetic organic chemicals after their intended use. He paid special attention to the organic wastewater contaminants in the groundwater and streams in the USA. Specifically, he monitored the concentrations, analyzed the source and transport paths, mined the impact on the environment and put forward relevant control strategies [ 43 – 47 ].

In the late stage, researchers mainly studied the specific types of pollutants (e.g. pharmaceuticals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)), discussed their impacts on the environmental media (e.g. air, soil or water), as well as compared changes under different conditions (e.g. spatial and temporal variations, varying types of crops and agricultural inputs). Publications during this stage normally focused on a specific geographical area (e.g. Dalian in China or Iowa in the USA), or an agricultural production environment (e.g. basins containing livestock farming operations or a high corn and soybean producing region). Articles by Li, in the third stage, mainly researched sources and distributions of Dechlorane plus or PAHs in specific parts of China and their implications for human exposure. His studies further explored the sources, characteristics and potential human health risks of POPs in water, soil and the atmosphere within a certain geographical area [ 48 – 53 ]. Kolpin, in the late stage, primarily investigated the occurrence of chemical contaminants in water plants (e.g. sewage treatment plants) or bodies of water (e.g. wastewater-impacted streams, agricultural basins). In his recent studies, he analyzed the chemicals contaminants’ spatial and temporal variations and exposures to fish (e.g. smallmouth bass), livestock and human health [ 54 – 64 ].

Our findings suggest that the three stages identified (i.e. B1, B2 and B3) for the topic of interest reflect the evolution and sequential advancement of knowledge in the field. The B1 stage mirrors the foundational knowledge research conducted about the presence of pollutants in the environmental media. As observed, the B1 stage informs the B2 phase by providing scientific data and evidence about agricultural chemical inputs and chemical contaminants in the environment. The B3 stage is the current research frontier, which explores the occurrence and potential risks of chemical pollutants in specific contexts. For instance, in the latter stage, publications mainly revolve around the response mechanisms of environmental systems to chemical pollutants and on the potential risk for human health and ecological health induced by chemical pollutants. The transition from the initial stage (B1) to the current research frontier (B3) reflect the gradual progression in research for this topic: assessment of the situation, evaluation of overall impact, and analysis of transdisciplinary and context-specific impact.

3.2 Citation-clustering analysis

Top five highest-frequency articles in the first two clusters and top dive pivot nodes in Cluster A3.

To assess the research focus of environmental impacts induced by agricultural chemical inputs, this paper conducts cluster optimization with the relevant literature review. The results show that researches about this topic primarily consists of three clusters, namely A1 (the upper part in Figure 2 ), A2 (the middle part in Figure 2 ) and A3 (the lower part in Figure 2 ).

Network of high-cited frequency clusters.

Research studies within the A1 cluster largely focus on the effects of pesticides and veterinary drugs on the environment. The A1 cluster can be further divided in two Subclusters A1_1 and A1_2 where the former concentrates in the study of chemical residues in various environmental media after their application and their impact on human health in countries or regions [ 42 , 65 – 67 ], while the latter deals with research on veterinary drug residues in various environmental media as well as the pollutants monitoring techniques and methods (i.e. passive sampling techniques) are studied [ 44 , 70 , 71 , 84 , 85 ]. Particularly, the distinctive light green region on the left side of A1 represents key research on the impact of pesticide exposure on wildlife and human conducted at end of 1990s [ 72 , 73 , 86 ]. It is worth noting that articles in cluster A1 have been frequently cited since year 2000, and may be conceived as the initial stage of research on agricultural chemicals and their impact on the environmental.

Furthermore, the A2 cluster contains publications with emphasis on the effects of chemical fertilizer applications for the environment, especially on farmland. Specifically, the research in the A2 cluster addresses the topic of soil problems due to the improper application of chemical fertilizer. For example, articles within this cluster study the loss of soil elements due to the non-proportional application of chemical fertilizer and soil acidification due to the excessive use of chemical fertilizers [ 52 , 74 , 76 , 77 ]. This cluster also embodies investigations on ways to promote sustainable management practices for cultivated land without compromising the global food demands and security [ 75 , 87 , 88 ].

Finally, the A3 cluster distinctively connects A1–A2, serving as an ‘information bridge’. Research within cluster A3, represented nodes situated in the middle of the network, includes novel methods and technologies for monitoring and controlling the environmental impact of agricultural chemicals inputs [ 79 , 80 , 89 , 90 ]. Specifically, these methods include techniques to determine pollutant sources (e.g. stable isotope analysis), to measure the toxicity of pollutants, and to evaluate the negative effects of pesticides on environment, as well as methods to control the spread of pollutants and to reduce the negative effects of agricultural chemicals [ 79 , 83 ]. As shown in Figure 3 , three areas are circled out in A3, which represent five significant records. For instance, studies within Cluster A3 explore specific techniques to monitor chemical pollutants in the environment and lays the foundation for pollutant measurement, sources and characteristic analysis and environmental impact assessment. Interestingly, research stem from this line of inquiry connects previous research on pesticide contamination and monitoring captured by Clusters A1 and A2 [ 85 , 89 , 91 – 97 ]. Finally, A3 cluster research dealing with techniques to control chemical pollutants in the environment connects previous research on the environmental impact of the application of chemical fertilizer (Cluster A1) and studies on strategic practices for reducing environmental impact of fertilizer pollutants while ensuring food security and promoting the sustainable development of agricultural industry (Cluster A2) [ 87 , 98 – 100 ].

pivot nodes in the knowledge area ‘A3’.

3.3 Co-occurrence network of subject terms analysis

Top five subject terms in seven categories.

The carrier category in Table 2 represents the carrier of chemical pollutants, namely the subject that exerts influence on the environment. The most frequent terms in this category are pesticide and fertilizer. Other high-frequency terms include organochlorine pesticides and nitrogen fertilizer. Our findings reveal that based on the evaluated records, pesticide and fertilizer in agricultural chemicals are the main source of pollutants research in the literature.

The category of environmental object represents objects affected by agricultural chemical inputs. In the context of our study, the most frequent terms (objects) are soil, water and air. Other high-frequency words include groundwater, wastewater, surface water and sewage sludge. Our results indicate that water, soil and air are the most researched environmental media when it comes to pollution derived from pesticides and fertilizers. Specifically, our findings suggest that researchers have focused on monitoring the concentration and diffusion of agricultural chemicals in soil, water and atmosphere. In addition, climate change is a frequent term in this category, with emphasis on the impact mechanism of agricultural chemicals on the atmospheric environment.

The process category include research dealing with the process of agricultural chemicals exerting impacts on the environment. The most frequency terms include pollute, leach, irrigation, runoff and eutrophication. It indicates that studies about the phenomenon of water eutrophication caused by the loss of nitrogen and phosphorus in the process of rainfall or irrigation has been of great concern and merited the attention of researchers.

The cycle category represents the biogeochemical cycle, that is, the transfer process of the chemical elements needed by a living organism between the organism and the environment. Nitrogen and phosphorus have the highest frequency among chemical elements, and it indicates that studies mainly focus on effects of excessively using agricultural chemicals on the process of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Meanwhile, the degradation of nitrogen, phosphorus and other chemical pollutants in the environment, especially biodegrade, appear to be another salient topic.

The method category represents research methods and management strategies, including research methods for exploring the environmental impact of agricultural chemical inputs, as well as management strategies for reducing the environmental hazards induced by agricultural chemicals. Model and risk assessment are the top two frequency terms. Other high-frequency terms include bioremediation, integrated pest management, monitor and passive sample. This indicates that assessing the environmental risk and controlling the usage of agricultural chemicals based on various models have deemed relevant and timely issues in the literature. For example, researchers have collected samples based on various means (such as passive air samplers) and used various risk indicators to assess the environmental impact of agricultural chemicals. In addition, studies have extensively explored measures and strategies (e.g. bioremediation and integrated pest management) to reduce and mitigate environmental hazards caused by agricultural chemical inputs.

The agricultural object category includes the high-frequency words, such as wheat, fish, maize, rice, plant and crop. Overall, this category reflects the major research emphasis on the crops and fisheries. Interestingly, the word ‘China’ is also the key word in this category, indicating that with high consumption and low efficiency of agricultural chemicals inputs, China has become one of the main researched geographical region in terms of environmental problems.

Indicator category includes the different factors used when assessing the environmental impact induced by agricultural chemicals. The most frequent terms include heavy metal, nitrate, POP, organophosphate, pesticide residue and endocrine disruptor. Our results indicate that chemical pollutants including metal nitrate, pesticide and residue heavy have been widely investigated as major determinants of pollution. Importantly, we find that the extant literature has predominantly examined the effect and risk of pollutants for bodies of water, soil organism, air, fishes, bees and human health.

Finally, to better understand the key nodes and their relationships among the categories, we conduct a visualized analysis in the Gephi platform based on the co-occurrence relationship, PageRank value and the seven identified categories (see Figure 4 ). Based on the PageRank value, we identified the top three categories. ‘Carrier’, ‘agricultural object’ and ‘indicator’ are the top three categories, which indicate that scholars have largely paid attention to analyze the transport process of chemical pollutants and assessing their impact on the environment, especially under agricultural production scenarios. The difference in thickness for the graphed lines denote the strength of links or connections. As shown in Figure 4 , agriculture and environment, pollute and environment, pesticide and environment, and nitrate and leach have a strong semantic relation.

Co-occurrence network of filtered subject terms.

3.4 Academic cooperation and knowledge sharing among countries and institutions

The mutually beneficial cooperation among different research institutes and countries plays a key role in promoting the development of science and technology. Citation number analysis and co-authorship analysis are important methods for evaluating the cooperation and research level of different institutes and countries. In the present paper, we first summarize the global development trends based on citation statistics of different countries. Then, we employ co-authorship metrics to analyze the scientific knowledge communication and organization distribution in the collaboration network. Ultimately, we present an overall knowledge-sharing network among different countries and institutions.

From a time sequence perspective, the relevant and selected 16 459 articles on ‘the environmental impact of agricultural chemical inputs’ demonstrate an exponential growth (see Figure 5 ). This indicates that based on direction, the current research is in the middle and preliminary stage of a rapid forecasted development, and the volume of scientific knowledge is expected to grow dramatically with optimistic future predictions. Our findings suggest that prior to 2006, Asian and South American countries, such as China, India and Brazil, lagged far behind in terms of technological advancement when compared to developed countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia and some European countries (e.g. UK, France, Germany and Holland), the same trend is observed for the number of publication amounts generated and growth rates. In recent years, the gap has narrowed down significantly, which can be attributed to the strengthening and investment in science and technology (especially the advancement of environmental science and ecological science) in Asian and South American countries. It is noticeable that, in China, the number of articles grew significantly from 54 to 267 during 2006–15 period. Then in 2015, the number of publications (267 articles) produced by China surpassed the number of publications generated in USA (239 articles). Interestingly, the citation growth rate has gradually decreased in developed countries, such as the UK and Holland, but has steadily increased in developing countries, such as India and Brazil. This result reveal the cooperation among countries in the newly advanced economic development (i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in order to advance and promote the technology and innovation in the agricultural sector.

Rapid increase of scientific papers on the world-wide scale.

Moreover, results from co-authorship network analysis suggest that institutions and organizations based in North America, East Asia and Europe are the major research contributors; this trend is visualized via Google Earth View (see part A of Figure 6 ). Each area has established close cooperation relations. Leading countries, such as the USA and Canada in North America, and France and Germany in Europe have dominating effects upon scientific development and collaboration. Data statistics and visualization can help to discover rules and distributions of academic collaborations within this topic. As shown in part B of Figure 6 , the co-author communities are identified in the large linked network. Greater density indexes are marked by deeper colors in the thermodynamic diagram. Some hubs are most prominent, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences ‘Chinese AcadSci,’ the Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishment in France ‘CNRS,’ the United States Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Research Service ‘USDA ARS,’ the Canadian Natural Resources ‘Nat Resource Canada,’ and the University of Paris Diderot, Paris 7 ‘University Paris 07.’ Darker color vertices have relatively higher diameter and can be observed as a side-by side comparison demonstrated in above four-part visualized images. As seen, CNRS ranks first with 17 units and is followed by Chinese Academy of Sciences with 15 units.

Visualization of Academic collaboration network.

Detailed information of scientific research organizations-based co-authorship weights.

Using informetrics theory-based methods (i.e. document co-citation analysis, document clustering and co-words analysis via co-occurrence network of subject terms), this study distinguishes and further explores research frontiers, research hotspots and high-frequency terms using aggregated and multiple-source literature records related to the topic of ‘effects of agricultural chemical inputs on the environment.’

From a macro-level view, citation network analysis shows that the impact of agricultural chemicals on the environment can be divided into three periods. In the early stage (1990–99), studies mainly focus on the application of agricultural chemicals, pollutant emissions and their concentration in various environmental media. During the middle stage (2000–07), studies mainly focus on the production mechanism, source apportionment, transmission channel and source/sink relationship of pollutants. In the late stage (2008–16), studies mainly focus on discussing the influence of specific pollutants on various environmental medias and comparing the changes under different conditions.

Citation-clustering analysis, a meso-level method, shows that the main research directions include the effects of pesticides and veterinary drugs on the environment (A1), the influence of fertilizer application on environmental and food safety (A2), and the technologies and strategies for monitoring and controlling the impact of agricultural chemicals on environment (A3). The A3 cluster contains special pivot nodes in the knowledge network, connecting A1 and A2, providing research in A1 and A2 with technical supports for revealing the impacts.

From a micro-level perspective, results from co-occurrence network of subject terms analysis, show that pesticides and chemical fertilizer are the main types of agricultural chemicals. As for pollutant types, POPs, heavy metals, nitrates and pesticide residue in environmental media appear to be of major interest and concern. Moreover, agricultural chemical inputs and their environmental impact derived from the production of wheat, maize and rice seem to be main focal point. For environmental objects impacted by agricultural chemicals, particular attention in the literature has been paid to soil, air and water, studying the potential risks of environmental pollution to fishes, bees and human health. Major concern is given to the process of environmental pollution caused by agricultural chemicals. For example, the impact process of excessively using agricultural chemicals on nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, as well as water eutrophication and other problems caused by this process, has raised widespread concern. Close attention has been paid to methods to control these negative effects. For example, these is research about methods to biodegrade nitrogen, phosphorus and other chemical pollutants in environmental media, to achieve the sustainable development of agriculture.

Citation analysis suggests that the volume of scientific knowledge and contributions, as measured by number of publications related to the topic, has grown dramatically with an optimistic future forecast. The gap of publication numbers between developing and developed countries is gradually narrowing down. The co-authorship analysis shows that authors based in North America (USA and Canada), East Asian (China, South Korea and Japan) and Europe (France and Germany) are the major research contributors for the topic of interest. National academic research organizations (e.g. Chinese Academy of Sciences), equipped with comprehensive and interdisciplinary expertise and social influence, have adopted leading research roles as compared to universities and other educational research institutes. In particular, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (China), National Institute of Agricultural Research (France), French National Center for Scientific Research (France), US Department of Agri/culture (the USA) and Cornell University (the USA) constitute the main hubs for research concerning the impact of agricultural chemicals on the environmental media.

Though the results of this study provide a useful summary of last three decades of research conducted in the topic of the effects of agricultural inputs on the environment, this research is not exempt from limitations. For example, the salient agricultural inputs used for the analysis (i.e. pesticides and fertilizers) have distinctive uses in agricultural activities and their effects on the environment may greatly vary by input. In addition, pesticides can further be divided based on their function (e.g. fumigants, insecticides, biopesticides, herbicides, etc.) and the impact of these on the environment may differ. The same is true for agricultural fertilizers which are often classified based on their efficiency, origin and phase. Finally, future literature review research may benefit from a narrower focus for targeting records that concern a single environmental media.

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences Foundation of China (41501213 and 71333006); the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (2662017PY045); the Key Project for Studies of Philosophy and Social Sciences by Ministry of Education (15JZD014); the Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (15ZDC038); the project of philosophy and social sciences of Guangdong Province (GDXK201721); the project of Guangdong Institute for International Strategies (17ZDA19) and the University of Florida International Center’s Global Fellowship Award.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Essay on Sustainable Agriculture

Introduction: what is sustainable agriculture, importance of sustainable agriculture, population growth, per capita food consumption, sustainable agriculture and technology, green politics, conclusion of sustainable agriculture.

Bibliography

Sustainable agriculture has dominated the sociological understanding of the rural world largely. Following the enthusiasm around the concept as a means of eradication of poverty and turning the economy to a “resource-efficient, low carbon Green Economy” 1 . Global population, and consequently consumption has increased.

However, technology development has matched the demand for food in terms of food production, but the distribution of food is not evenly distributed. This has brought forth the question of the possibility of supplying adequate food to the ever-growing global population.

Further, the challenges posed by depleting non-renewable sources of energy, rising costs, and climate change has brought the issue related to sustainability of food production and the related social and economic impact of the food production into forefront. This paper outlines the meaning and technology related to sustainable agriculture and tries to gauge its impact as a possible solution to the impending food crisis.

Sustainable agriculture is a process of farming using eco-friendly methods understanding and maintaining the relationship between the organisms and environment. In this process of agriculture and animal husbandry are combined to form a simultaneous process and practice. In other words, sustainable agriculture is an amalgamation of three main elements viz. ecological health, profitability, and propagating equality.

The concept of sustainability rests on the principle of not wasting any resources that may become useful to the future generation. Therefore, the main idea of sustainability rests on stewardship of individual and natural resources. Before understanding the technology involved in sustainable agriculture, it is important to know why we need it in the first place.

The rise in population growth and urbanization of people has led to a dietary change of the world population, which now rests more on animal protein 2 . Therefore understanding the demographic changes in the world population has become an important parameter to judge the future demand for food.

As population growth rate is the key variable that affects the demand for food, therefore understanding the number of people increasing worldwide is important. According to the UNDP results, the annual population growth rate had declined from 2.2% in 1962 to 1.1% in 2010, however, this increase to indicate an increase of 75 million people 3 .

However, this increase in population is not equitably distributed as some areas such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia face a growth rate of 2% while others such as the erstwhile Soviet bloc countries have a negative rate.

According to the UNDP predictions, population worldwide is expected to increase to 9 billion in 2050 from the present 7 billion 4 . Therefore, the uncertain growth in population is expected to affect food demand and therefore food production.

Undernourishment is a prevalent problem in the developing world, wherein almost 20% of the developing world that is more than 5 billion people is undernourished.

Further, in emerging economies, food consumption is increasing with increased preference for animal protein such as meat, dairy products, and egg. Therefore, the growth of consumption of animal protein has increased the necessity of grazing of livestock, therefore, increasing further pressure on the food supply.

It is believed that the increase in the demand for food due to the increase in global population and change in dietary habit of the population. In the past, the demand for food and the rate of production has remained at par, but the unequal distribution of food has led to the major problem in food supply and starvation in various parts of the world.

Another problem that food production in the future faces is the constraint of non-renewable natural resources. The most critical resources, which are becoming scant for the future generations are –

• Land : Availability of land globally to cultivate food has grown marginally due to the increase in global population. The availability of land available per person to grow food has declined from 1.30 hectares in 1967 to 0.72 hectares in 2007 5 . Therefore, a clear dearth in agricultural land is a deterrent to future agriculture.
• Water : The world comprises of 70% freshwater resources, available from river and groundwater. Deficiency of freshwater has been growing as usage of water has increased more than twice the rate of population growth 6 . As water is required for irrigation purposes, water availability to is not equally distributed around the world. Therefore, reduced water supply would limit the per capita production of food.
• Energy : Globally, the scarcity of the non-renewable resources of energy is another concern. The global demand for energy is expected to double by 2050, consequently increasing energy prices 7 . Therefore, food production for the future will have to devise a technology based on renewable sources of energy.

The question of sustainability in agriculture arose due to some pressing issues that have limited the utilization of erstwhile processes and technologies for food production. However, it should be noted that sustainable agriculture does not prescribe any set rule or technology for the production process, rather shows a way towards sustainability 8 .

Sustainable agriculture uses best management practice by adhering to target-oriented cultivation. The agriculture process looks at disease-oriented hybrid, pest control through use of biological insecticides and low usage of chemical pesticide and fertilizer. Usually, insect-specific pest control is used, which is biological in nature.

Water given to the crops is through micro-sprinklers which help is directly watering the roots of the plants, and not flooding the field completely. The idea is to manage the agricultural land for both plants and animal husbandry.

For instance, in many southwestern parts of Florida’s citrus orchards, areas meant for water retention and forest areas become a natural habitat for birds and other animals 9 . The process uses integrated pest management that helps in reducing the amount of pesticide used in cultivation.

Sustainable agriculture adopts green technology as a means of reducing wastage of non-renewable energy and increase production. In this respect, the sustainable agricultural technology is linked to the overall developmental objective of the nation and is directly related to solving socio-economic problems of the nation 10 .

The UN report states, “The productivity increases in possible through environment-friendly and profitable technologies.” 11 In order to understand the technology better, one must realize that the soil’s health is crucial for cultivation of crops.

Soil is not just another ingredient for cultivation like pesticides or fertilizers; rather, it is a complex and fragile medium that must be nurtured to ensure higher productivity 12 . Therefore, the health of the soil can be maintained using eco-friendly methods:

Healthy soil, essential to agriculture, is a complex, living medium. The loose but coherent structure of good soil holds moisture and invites airflow. Ants (a) and earthworms (b) mix the soil naturally. Rhizobium bacteria (c) living in the root nodules of legumes (such as soybeans) create fixed nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient.

Other soil microorganisms, including fungi (d), actinomycetes (e) and bacteria (f), decompose organic matter, thereby releasing more nutrients. Microorganisms also produce substances that help soil particles adhere to one another. To remain healthy, soil must be fed organic materials such as various manures and crop residues. 13

This is nothing but a broader term to denote environment-friendly solutions to agricultural production. Therefore, the technology-related issue of sustainable agriculture is that it should use such technology that allows usage of renewable sources of energy and is not deterrent to the overall environment.

The politics around sustainable agriculture lies in the usage of the renewable sources of energy and disciplining of the current consumption rates 14 . The politics related to the sustainable agriculture is also related to the politics of sustainable consumption.

Though there is a growing concern over depleting food for the future and other resources, there is hardly any measure imposed by the governments of developed and emerging economies to sustain the consumption pattern of the population 15 .

The advocates of green politics believe that a radical change of the conventional agricultural process is required for bringing forth sustainable agriculture 16 . Green politics lobbies for an integrated farming system that can be the only way to usher in sustainable agricultural program 17 .

Sustainable agriculture is the way to maintain a parity between the increasing pressure of food demand and food production in the future. As population growth, change in income demographics, and food preference changes, there are changes in the demand of food of the future population.

Further, changes in climate and increasing concern regarding the depletion of non-renewable sources of energy has forced policymakers and scientists to device another way to sustain the available resources as well as continue meeting the increased demand of food.

Sustainable agriculture is the method through which these problems can be overlooked, bringing forth a new integrated form of agriculture that looks at food production in a holistic way.

Batie, S. S., ‘Sustainable Development: Challenges to Profession of Agricultural Economics’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 71, no. 5, 1989: 1083-1101.

Dobson, A., The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory, Psychology Press, London, 1993.

Leaver, J. D., ‘Global food supply: a challenge for sustainable agriculture’, Nutrition Bulletin, vol. 36 , 2011: 416-421.

Martens, S., & G. Spaargaren, ‘The politics of sustainable consumption: the case of the Netherlands’, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, vol.1 no. 1, 2005: 29-42.

Morris, C., & M. Winter, ‘Integrated farming systems: the third way for European agriculture?’, Land Use Policy, vol. 16, no. 4, 1999: 193–205.

Reganold, J. P., R. I. Papendick, & J. F. Parr, ‘Sustainable Agriculture’, Scientific American , 1990: 112-120.

Townsend, C., ‘ Technology for Sustainable Agriculture. ‘ Florida Gulf Coast University, 1998. Web.

United Nations, ‘ Green technology for sustainable agriculture development ‘, United Nations Asian And Pacific Centre For Agricultural Engineering And Machinery, 2010. Web.

—, ‘ Sustainable agriculture key to green growth, poverty reduction – UN officials ‘, United Nations, 2011. Web.

1 United Nations, Sustainable agriculture key to green growth, poverty reduction – UN officials, UN News Centre, 2011.

2 J. D. Leaver, ‘Global food supply: a challenge for sustainable agriculture’, Nutrition Bulletin , vol. 36, 2011, pp. 416-421.

3 Leaver, p. 417.

5 Leaver, p. 418.

7 Leaver, p. 419.

8 J. N. Pretty, ‘Participatory learning for sustainable agriculture’, World Development , vol. 23, no. 8, 1995, pp. 1247-1263.

9 Chet Townsend, ‘Technology for Sustainable Agriculture’, Florida Gulf Coast University , 1998.

10 United Nations, ‘Green technology for sustainable agriculture development’, United Nations Asian And Pacific Centre For Agricultural Engineering And Machinery , 2010.

11 United Nations, p. 17.

12 J. P. Reganold, R. I. Papendick, & J. F. Parr, ‘Sustainable Agriculture’, Scientific American , 1990, pp. 112-120.

13 Regnold et al., p. 112.

14 S. S. Batie, ‘Sustainable Development: Challenges to Profession of Agricultural Economics’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 71, no. 5, 1989, pp. 1083-1101.

15 S. Martens & G. Spaargaren, ‘The politics of sustainable consumption: the case of the Netherlands’, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy , vol.1 no. 1, 2005, pp. 29-42.

16 A. Dobson, The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory , Psychology Press, London, 1993, p. 82.

17 C .Morris & M. Winter, ‘Integrated farming systems: the third way for European agriculture?’, Land Use Policy , vol. 16, no. 4, 1999, pp. 193–205.

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IvyPanda. (2019, April 20). Essay on Sustainable Agriculture. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sustainable-agriculture-essay/

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• What Is The Environmental Impact Of Agriculture?

• This environmental impact of agriculture is the effect of various farming practices, and it can vary greatly depending on the country we are looking at.
• Many critical environmental issues are tied to agriculture, such as climate change, dead zones, genetic engineering, pollutants, deforestation, soil degradation, waste, and many others.
• Deforestation is a big side effect of agriculture that greatly impacts our planet and the environment. It is defined as the clearing of the forests on our planet on a larger scale, and it causes land damage across the world.
• Irrigation, the process of applying controlled amounts of water to plants, can also create various problems for the environment. It can lead to the depletion of underground layers of water that are crucial for the environment.

Agriculture can have a massive impact on the ecosystems surrounding it. This environmental impact of agriculture is the effect of various farming practices, and it can vary greatly depending on the country we are looking at. However, more often than not, the impact is negative. It also largely depends on the type of practices in agriculture that are used in various parts of the world.

Many climate variables can also influence the impact of agriculture on the environment. This includes temperature and rainfall. Naturally, the type of machinery used also plays a major role, as do the ways of handling livestock. Many critical environmental issues are tied to agriculture, such as climate change, dead zones, genetic engineering, pollutants, deforestation, soil degradation, waste, and many others.

We usually divide the indicators of the environmental impact of agriculture into two types. The means-based type refers to the methods the farmers use in production, and the effect based types refer to the impact of farming methods on the farming system and the emissions on the environment. There are many ways in which agriculture can negatively impact the environment, but one of the most common ones is through climate change.

The Effect On Climate Change

Climate change is closely related to agriculture. Both of these processes take place globally, and while climate change does affect agriculture negatively, through higher temperatures and carbon dioxide levels, it is much more interesting to take a look at how agriculture affects climate change. This mostly happens through the release of greenhouse gases. These gases have a negative effect on climate change and include carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.

Various types of agriculture also use fertilization and pesticides, which releases phosphorus and nitrate in the air, among other things. This can affect the quality of soil, air, and water. It can also impact the biodiversity of our planet and make changes in the land cover. What this means is that the ability of the Earth to either absorb or reflect light and heat can change drastically. This leads to radiative forcing, which is the difference between the absorbed sunlight and the reflected energy.

Agriculture can also cause deforestation, which also influences climate change. Farmers often use fossil fuels, which is another thing that factors into the emissions of carbon dioxide. The usage of livestock emits methane, which also has a negative impact. We can see that agriculture is closely related to climate change and that certain methods in it need to be changed to ensure a future for all of us.

Other Ways The Environment Is Impacted

Deforestation is a big side effect of agriculture that greatly impacts our planet and the environment. It is defined as the clearing of the forests on our planet on a larger scale, and it causes land damage across the world. Farmers often cause deforestation by clearing land for their crops. Most of the deforestation happens because of slash-and-burn farming. As the name implies, this method includes the cutting and burning of plants in order to create land suitable for farming.

Other things that cause deforestation include palm oil plantations, cattle ranching, and heavy logging. Because of deforestation, many animal species lose their habitat, and as previously mentioned, it leads to climate change. 

Climate change and deforestation are the two biggest and most important ways through which agriculture impacts our environment. However, several others might not work on such a large scale but are still important. Irrigation, the process of applying controlled amounts of water to plants, can also create various problems for the environment. It can lead to the depletion of underground layers of water that are crucial for the environment. It can also over water the soil, which leads to specific problems as well.

Pollutants such as pesticides are also a major part of agriculture that negatively impacts the environment. It is self-explanatory; these products are chemicals that can have a long-lasting effect on soil and plants if used continuously. Soil can get contaminated, air can get polluted, and residues of these pollutants can appear in food. Other ways agriculture can impact the environment include waste and soil degradation. Both are unavoidable byproducts of agriculture as we know it today.

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Taylor, Charles

This dissertation explores policy-relevant questions related to climate change, agriculture, land use, and water from an environmental economics perspective. The first chapter investigates the impact of pesticides on human health and welfare using using cicada emergence as a ecologically-driven natural experiment. The second analyzes the relationship between irrigation and climate change, showing how adaptive measures can create negative externalities. The third chapter provides an estimate of the value of wetlands for flood mitigation, an important topic in relation to the Clean Water Act. Overall, these chapters explore both how humans affect the land and the reverse feedback of how land use decisions affect human welfare.

• Climatic changes
• Sustainable development
• Land use--Environmental aspects
• Flood control
• Federal Water Pollution Control Act (United States)

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Modern Agriculture and its impact on the environment

Agriculture is an important source of livelihood. however, modern irrigation techniques are largely impacting the environment. in this article, we shed some light on modern agriculture and its impact on the environment. the topic is very useful in the preparation of competitive examinations like upsc, ssc, and state services..

Agriculture is an important source of livelihood because it is the process of producing food, feed, fiber, and many other desired products by the cultivation of plants and the raising of domesticated animals (livestock). It is an art of managing the growth of plants and animals for human use. Let's study how the development in the agriculture techniques have impacted the environment and ecosystem.

What is Modern agriculture?

Impact of modern agriculture on the environment.

As we know that modern agriculture improved our affordability of food, increases the food supply, ensured the food safety, increases sustainability, and also produces more biofuels. But at the same time, it also leads to environmental problems because it is based on high input–high output technique using hybrid seeds of high-yielding variety and abundant irrigation water, fertilizers, and pesticides. The impacts of modern agriculture on the Environment are discussed below:

Soil Erosion

The top fertile soil of the farmland is removed due to the excessive water supply. This leads to the loss of nutrient-rich soil that hampered productivity. It also causes global warming because the silt of water bodies induces the release of soil carbon from the particulate organic material.

How has climate change affected human life?

Contamination of groundwater

The groundwater is one of the important sources of water for irrigation. From agricultural fields, nitrogenous fertilizers leach into the soil and finally contaminate groundwater. When the nitrate level of groundwater exceeds 25 mg/l, they can cause a serious health hazard known as “Blue Baby Syndrome”, which affects mostly infants even leading to their death.

Water-logging and salinity

The salinity of the soil is one of the reasons of low productivity just because of the improper management of farm drainage. In this situation, the roots of plants do not get enough air to respiration then it leads to low crop yield as well as low mechanical strength.

Eutrophication

It refers to the addition of artificial or non-artificial substances such as nitrates and phosphate, through fertilizers or sewage, to a freshwater system. It leads to an increase in the primary productivity of the water body or the 'bloom' of phytoplankton.

Excessive use of fertilizers that consists of nitrogen and phosphorus leads to over nourishment of the lakes/water bodies and gives rise to the phenomenon of eutrophication (EU = more, trophication= nutrition).

Excessive use of Pesticide

There are many pesticides that are used for destroying pests and boosting crop production. Earlier arsenic, sulfur, lead, and mercury was used to kill pests. For Example- Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane (DDT) content pesticides were used, but unfortunately, it also targeted the beneficial pests. Most importantly, many pesticides are non-biodegradable, which also linked to the food chains which are harmful to the human being.

The relative significance of farming has dropped steadily since the beginning of industrialization, and in 2006 – for the first time in history – the services sector overtook agriculture as the economic sector employing the most people worldwide. But we forget that if we need food to survive then we need agriculture.

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Towards implementing precision conservation practices in agricultural watersheds: A review of the use and prospects of spatial decision support systems and tools

• Bodrud-Doza, Md.
• Yang, Wanhong
• de Queiroga Miranda, Rodrigo
• Martin, Alicia
• DeVries, Ben
• Fraser, Evan D. G.

Agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution leads to water quality degradation. While agriculture is faced with the challenge of feeding a growing population in a changing climate, farmers must also strive to minimize adverse impacts of agriculture on the environment. As a result, policies, and agri-environmental programs to promote agricultural conservation practices for controlling NPS pollution have been emerging. Despite progress, reducing NPS is a complex challenge that requires ongoing innovation and investment. A major challenge is to achieve an optimal spatial trade-off between the economic costs and positive environmental outcomes of conservation practices on complex agricultural landscapes. Geospatial systems and tools can help to address this challenge and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of conservation efforts. However, using these tools for precision conservation is underexamined. This review paper aims to address this gap through a critical exploration of spatial decision support systems and tools to provide synthesized knowledge for implementing precision conservation practices. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to guide the implementation of precision conservation and identifies areas for further development of geospatial systems and tools on planning and assessment of precision conservation efforts. All of which will be helpful for decision-makers and watershed managers in determining the most effective approaches for precision conservation. Furthermore, this review highlights the need for further research and development towards establishing an integrated spatial decision support system framework, which can improve socio-economic, environmental, and ecological outcomes.

• Agricultural nonpoint source pollution;
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Assessing the Impact of GMOs on Health and the Environment: a Comprehensive Review

This essay about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) discusses their role in addressing global challenges like food scarcity and climate change by improving crop resilience and productivity. It also highlights the controversies and risks associated with GMOs, such as potential health dangers and environmental impacts. The text emphasizes the need for a multidisciplinary approach to evaluate GMOs, stringent regulatory frameworks, and the importance of open dialogue and scientific literacy to make informed decisions about GMO technologies.

How it works

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are at the forefront of agricultural innovation, heralded as a solution to critical global issues like food shortage and climate change. They enhance crop resilience and productivity, potentially increasing food supplies by making plants more resistant to pests and extreme weather, thus reducing the need for chemical pesticides and lessening the ecological burden.

However, the deployment of GMOs is not without its controversies and risks. Critics point to the potential dangers of genetic engineering, such as unexpected allergic reactions, toxicity, and unwanted gene transfer, which raise concerns about the safety of GMOs for consumption.

Environmental concerns also persist, including the possibility of creating superweeds and disrupting natural pollination processes, which could have far-reaching effects on ecosystems.

The evaluation of GMOs involves a comprehensive approach that incorporates multiple disciplines. Extensive scientific research, from molecular biology to public health studies, is vital to understanding how GMOs interact with human health. Environmental studies from a range of fields, including soil science and biodiversity, are equally important to determine the ecological impacts of GMOs.

The regulatory environment for GMOs is complex, with countries varying widely in their management approaches. Some enforce strict regulations and labeling, while others have a more relaxed stance, reflecting differing public opinions and risk assessments. The key challenge is to find an equilibrium that encourages innovation while protecting health and the environment.

Promoting open and transparent dialogue is crucial for progressing with GMO technology. Engaging a broad range of stakeholders—including farmers, consumers, policymakers, and researchers—is key to building trust and achieving a consensus. Additionally, enhancing public understanding of science and encouraging critical thinking are essential to help individuals make informed choices about GMOs based on facts rather than misinformation and fear.

In summary, the issue of GMOs’ impact on health and the environment is complex and requires nuanced discussions. Although GMOs offer significant potential to solve urgent global issues, their risks must be carefully managed. Adopting a comprehensive, scientifically rigorous, and socially inclusive approach will be essential to navigating the future of GMOs in a way that harmonizes innovation with ecological and health safeguards.

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