Modern Agriculture and its Impact on Environment – Agriculture Quiz 2022

Agricultural methods have intensified continuously ever since the Industrial Revolution and even more  since the “green revolution” in the middle decades of the 20^th century. Meeting the demand for accelerated agricultural productivity is likely to be far more difficult than it has been so far. Modern agricultural practices usually are a term used to describe the wide majority of production methods used by farmers. According to recent studies, more than 90 percent of farmers embrace most innovative practices today, and other growing techniques to produce enough fuel, food, and fiber for a growing universe while minimizing their environmental impact at the same time. The term modern agriculture implies the advancement in terms of invention and innovation, stewardship, responsibility and meeting the environmental and global food challenge all at once.Many of the techniques and modifications on which farmers rely to boost output also harm the environment.

Modern Agriculture and its Impact on Environment 

In this article readers can have a glimpse on

• Basic Practices of Modern Agricultural Systems
• Impact of modern agriculture on environment
• Agriculture quiz

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Basic Practices of Modern Agricultural Systems

To meet the needs by producing highest need with a good economic profit the modern agricultural systems are of demand. Six basic practices have come to form the backbone of production.

The following are the modern practices involved in agriculture.

Intensive tillage, monoculture , application of inorganic fertilizer, irrigation, chemical pest control, and genetic manipulation of crop plants.

1. Intensive Tillage

The soil is cultivated deeply, completely, and regularly in most modern agricultural systems, and a vast array of tractors and farm implements have been developed to facilitate this practice. The soil is loosened, water drains better, roots grow faster, and seeds can be planted more easily. Cultivation is also used to control weeds and work dead plant matter into the soil. Intensive agriculture is a type of agriculture, both of crop plants and of animals, with higher levels of input and output per cubic unit of agricultural land area.

2. Monoculture

When one crop is grown alone in a field, it is called a monoculture. Monoculture makes it easier to cultivate, sow seed, control weeds, and harvest, as well as expand the size of the farm operation and improve aspects of profitability and cost.

Impact of modern agriculture on environment

Modern agriculture must have increased the yield and must have met the increased need of productivity due to increased population demand but has adversely effected the environment. The following are few impacts of utilization of modern techniques in agriculture

1. Soil erosion

Modern agriculture converted an increasing portion of the earth’s land surface to monoculture, the genetic and ecological diversity of the planet erodes. Both the conversion of diverse natural ecosystems to new agricultural lands and the narrowing of the genetic diversity of crops contribute to this soil erosion. Modern agriculture’s impact on the genetic diversity of crop plants is also profound. Recent gains in yield have been achieved by increased dependence on very few genetically narrow cultivars of only a handful of major food plants.

2. Chemical Contamination

The excess usage of fertilizers has caused chemical contamination. Nitrate is currently recognized as the most serious agricultural chemical pollutant . As nitrate shows up in drinking water, where it can cause methemoglobinemia in infants, attention is increasingly focused on nitrates in the groundwater source. Agriculture contributes to groundwater nitrate through the leaching of nitrogen fertilizer, animal wastes from feed lots, and organic matter from plowing under grasslands and crop residues.

Surface waters receive agricultural chemicals by runoff from field applications and feedlots and from the dumping of excess chemicals. Phosphorus from fertilizer applications binds to soil particles, whereby it can be exported in erosive runoff. Soluble organic forms in animal wastes or plant residues can also move into surface waters. Phosphorus is often the limiting nutrient in aquatic systems and is thus a major contributor to eutrophication . Nitrate, which is highly soluble and easily transported in runoff, also contributes to eutrophication . In combination, these two fertilizers have contributed much to the degradation of streams and other bodies of water in agricultural regions.

Pesticides also pose hazards by direct contamination of foodstuffs.

3. Irrigation

Irrigation has big importance to high agricultural yield and quality in arid and semi-arid regions. Wrong
irrigations cause to environment problems. Rising of ground water, salinity, fertilizers and chemical
additives residues go to deep with irrigation water, trace elements collect in water sources and cause to soil erosion. Excessive irrigation as a purpose of agricultural production leads to soil salinity and desertification.

4. Genetic Manipulation

Recent technological advances have vastly increased scientists’ ability to manipulate plants’ genes. For example, hybrid seeds combine the genetic sequences of two or more crop strains to achieve higher yields. Through genetic engineering, scientists have been able to splice genes from a variety of organisms into plant genomes. These transgenic seeds can contain coding for a number of desirable characteristics, such as herbicide resistance or frost tolerance. In the case of genetically modified seeds, some scientists are concerned about the consequences of genetic exchange between transgenic crops and wild plant populations. While conventionally bred seeds often spread and mix with wild seeds, the impacts of introducing non-plant genes that are contained in transgenic seeds into landrace seeds are
unknown.

For this reason humanity developed a new perspective to decrease the negative effects of agriculture. Sustainable agriculture which is a new agricultural technique seems environmentally friendly and it is supported by developed countries. Environmentally friendly agriculture has three common applications. These are good agricultural practices, organic agriculture and precision agriculture. Also rotation, sowing of legumes that able to nitrogen fixation and fallowing reduce the negative effect of agriculture on climate change.

GK Quiz on Indian Agriculture 2022