how is industrial agriculture similar to factories

” Industrial-style agriculture is characterized by “farms [that] are often very large, highly specialized, and run like factories with large inputs of fossil fuels, pesticides and other chemicals, and synthetic fertilizers derived from oil.”

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What is the difference between Farm farming and industrial farming?

How is industrial agriculture similar to factories? Deport Import Outputs Export. What are the major categories of modern agriculture? (choose 2) Industrial OrganicX Inorganic Traditional FarmingX. Complete the following sentence: Organic …

What is the relationship between industrial agriculture and food system?

 · Industrial agriculture is the large-scale, intensive production of crops and animals, often involving chemical fertilizers on crops or the routine, harmful use …

What is modern industrial agriculture?

Modern industrial agriculture is based on maximizing economic returns through increased crop yields and attempts to minimize risks of crop losses. Thus, land management practices are predominantly driven by increased efficiency and risk avoidance, just the same as other engineered industrial systems such as manufacturing.

What is industrial agriculture and why is it bad?

 · The concept of industrial agriculture implies increased use of farmlands to produce the highest yields possible to gain profit and support human food needs. The maximization is achieved through typical intensive farming practices like increased use of fertilizers, insecticides, abundant irrigation, heavy machinery land treatment, planting high-yield …

What is the similarities between industry and agriculture?

Agriculture and industries are interdependent i.e. they depend on each other. In other words, they both help each other and without one, the other cannot develop. Agriculture helps various industries by providing them raw materials, labour, a market for their goods and also food for workers in the industrial sector.

How does agriculture compare to manufacturing?

In agriculture, work performed by people using machinery consists mostly of mechanical movements or attempts to move or transport materials — after a waiting period while nature’s economy does its work. In modern manufacturing, the situation is essentially the same.

What’s the difference between factory farming and industrial farming?

Factory farm businesses are specialized and standardized: their mono-cropped fields, confinements and feedlots function like biological assembly lines – thus the name “factory farm.” Industrial processes are inherently linear and sequential: inputs or raw materials flow in and products and waste materials flow out.

How are industrial and sustainable agriculture similar?

Industrialized agriculture is highly concentrated and mechanized, relying on chemical inputs like fertilizers, pesticides and non-therapeutic antibiotics. However, sustainable agriculture, which uses methods that protect the environment, public health, human communities and animal welfare, is gaining traction.

What are the similarities and differences between agriculture service and industry?

However, agriculture is focused on the working of soil and other facilities to produce crops, animals and trees for human consumption or further refinement into products, while industry is focused more on refining and processing raw materials into products for sale.

What is an example of industrial agriculture?

Industrial agriculture, especially in the central United States, mostly produces commodity crops like corn and soybeans. These crops are used to make the processed foods that dominate the US diet, with serious—and enormously costly—health impacts.

What are the differences between factory and organic farming?

The principal differences between organic farming and conventional farming are the former’s extensive restriction of the use of artificial pesticides, fertilisers and other agro-chemicals; its hostility to the agricultural application of biotechnology; its rejection of the routine use of pharmaceuticals on livestock; …

What is meant by industrialized agriculture?

Industrial agriculture is the large-scale, intensive production of crops and animals, often involving chemical fertilizers on crops or the routine, harmful use of antibiotics in animals (as a way to compensate for filthy conditions, even when the animals are not sick).

What is industrial agriculture quizlet?

industrial agriculture. Agriculture that applies the techniques of mechanization and standardization. … Benefits: it develops simple farming to an intensive method modern equipment, tools, structures and techniques.

Is factory farming sustainable?

Why Is Factory Farming Not Sustainable? Factory farming is not sustainable because it uses far too much land, water and energy. To keep producing it we need ever more. Cutting down forests and other habitats not only releases CO2 into the atmosphere, but it prevents those felled trees from absorbing more.

What is the difference between industrialized agriculture and subsistence agriculture?

Unlike industrialized agriculture that utilizes monocultures, subsistence agriculture relies on polycultures, which is when different types of crops are planted in one area. Planting polycultures is a method used to get the most crop yield out of a small area of land.

Why is industrial agriculture important?

Industrial agriculture has substantially increased global agricultural productivity, leading to much more food for a growing human population. Industrial agriculture has also impacted human society in a variety of other ways and has had major impacts on the environment, many of which are harmful.

What were the main crops that were produced by diversified farms?

Diversified farms gave way to genetically uniform monocultures—fields planted with just one crop species at a time, such as corn, wheat, or soy, over a very large area. Meat, milk, and egg production became largely separated from crop production and involved facilities that housed a single breed of animal, during a particular period of its lifespan, for a single purpose (e.g., breeding, feeding, or slaughter). Farmers, once skilled in a breadth of trades, fell into more specialized roles.

What were the most important things about farming in the early 1900s?

In the early 1900s, more than half of Americans were either farmers or lived in rural communities. 1 Most U.S. farms were diversified, meaning they produced a variety of crops and animal species together on the same farm, in complementary ways. 2 Farmers were skilled in a wide range of trades and had autonomy over how to manage their crops and animals. Animals were typically raised with access to the outdoors. Most of the work on the farm was done by human or animal labor.

How much grain can a mechanized thresher process?

Mechanization brought tremendous gains in efficiency. By hand, a person can thresh roughly 15 to 40 kg of grain per hour, usually by beating the harvested crop against a hard surface to shake the grain loose from the inedible chaff that surrounds it. In the same amount of time, a mechanized thresher can process 450 to 600 kg of rice, sorghum, or beans, or 1,500 to 2,000 kg of corn. 8

How does a combine harvester work?

The combine harvester performs two processes at once: cutting grain (reaping) and removing it from the inedible part (threshing). Mechanization in agriculture greatly reduced the need for human and animal labor. From 1950 to 2000, production on U.S. farms more than doubled with less than a third of the labor costs. 9.

What is a specialized farmer?

Specialized farmers, by contrast, can focus all their knowledge, skills, and equipment on one or two enterprises, such as growing corn and soy, or fattening beef cattle. Over the course of industrialization, specialization was applied to nearly all facets of food production. Diversified farms gave way to genetically uniform monocultures—fields …

How does specialization help farmers?

Specialization aims to increase efficiency by narrowing the range of tasks and roles involved in production. A diversified farmer, for example, might need to manage and care for many different vegetable crops, a composting operation, a flock of egg-laying hens, a sow, and her litter of piglets. Specialized farmers, by contrast, can focus all their knowledge, skills, and equipment on one or two enterprises, such as growing corn and soy, or fattening beef cattle. Over the course of industrialization, specialization was applied to nearly all facets of food production.

How does specialization increase efficiency?

Specialization aims to increase efficiency by narrowing the range of tasks and roles involved in production. This approach was applied to nearly all facets of food production. Diversified farms gave way to genetically uniform monocultures—fields planted with just one crop species at a time, over a very large area.

What is industrial agriculture?

Industrial agriculture is all about controlling nature, curating the land for human use, and choosing which plants are valuable. Although much of biodiversity loss is a secondary result of farming techniques (think: habitat loss or unintended chemical runoff), plants are often eradicated on purpose (think: weeds).

How has industrial agriculture helped the world?

Industrial agriculture has had great success in producing abundant, low-cost food. World hunger has been declining for decades, and food production per capita has increased sharply since the 1960s. But this success has come with costs that raise questions about the sustainability and the unintended effects of the global “rationalization” …

How are food systems dependent on fossil fuels?

Industrial agriculture and food systems are largely dependent on fossil fuels for the production of food by way of machinery and mechanization, agrichemicals, transportation, food processing, food packaging, assimilating waste, etc . (Shiva et al., 2017; Neff et al., 2011 ). In the United States, fossil fuel and the energy used by the food system is substantial ( Canning et al., 2017 ). The energy used for food accounted for over half of the total increased energy use in the United States between 1997 and 2002 ( Canning et al., 2017 ). In an era where oil reserves will dip and extracting new resources is not only expensive but also has a detrimental impact on the natural environment, reducing energy use by food systems is imperative ( Neff et al., 2011 ).

What is genetic engineering?

Genetic engineering techniques have been introduced to create proprietary plant cultivars with desirable new characteristics. However, it is not clear that this new technology can substantially reduce industrial agriculture’s negative ecological impacts or solve its pressing problems of economic viability.

How have individuals and groups responded to industrial agriculture?

Individuals and groups have responded to industrial agriculture by using their purchasing power to support sources of locally grown food. One manifestation is ‘community-supported agriculture’ (CSA), in which individuals purchase ‘shares’ in a particular farm’s annual crop.

How does industrial agriculture affect the environment?

Side effects of industrial agriculture include soil erosion, water pollution from inorganic fertilizer and pesticides, simplification of ecosystems, consolidation of small farms into large ones, and shipment of food over long distances requiring both energy and time. Individuals and groups have responded to industrial agriculture by using their purchasing power to support sources of locally grown food. One manifestation is ‘community-supported agriculture’ (CSA), in which individuals purchase ‘shares’ in a particular farm’s annual crop. Each week during the growing season, each shareholder is entitled to a basket of produce from the CSA farm they support. Groups like the Food Trust (Philadelphia, Pa.) have pioneered CSAs and other innovations include local farmers’ markets, urban community gardens and farms, schoolyard gardens, and farm-to-school and farm-to-campus programs that provide students with locally grown food while offering local farms a reliable market for their crops. Despite the great wealth of the United States, hunger and malnutrition remain widespread. Groups such as the National Food Security Coalition (Portland, Ore.) are developing food security coalitions and food policy councils around the country, aiming to make sure everyone has access to reasonably priced local food, particularly in areas considered, ‘food deserts’ where there are few or no grocery stores. Local organizations such as the Food Project (Lincoln, Mass.) and Isles (Trenton, N.J.) bring healthy, locally grown food into low-income communities by training and engaging young people in techniques of sustainable agriculture. Around the country, other groups such as Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (Athens, Ohio) are providing commercial-scale kitchens and business incubators to spur locally based food businesses that rely on locally grown food.

What is the goal of organic farming?

As time passed, the organic farming movement shifted into a ‘sustainable agriculture’ movement with three goals: farming practices compatible with natural systems, using organic fertilizers and few or no chemical pesticides; achieving food security, emphasizing locally grown foods; and maintaining rural economies that could sustain, and be sustained by, relatively small-scale farms.

What are the benefits of industrial agriculture?

Benefits Of Industrial Agriculture. The main advantage of intensive farming is its increased performance when higher yields are harvested from smaller territories. This brings economic benefits to landowners and provides food for the growing population. Intensive agriculture fully satisfies the market demand even in densely inhabited areas.

How does industrial agriculture affect animals?

Apart from the expansion of new territories when wildlife loses its natural habitation areas, animals are greatly affected by chemical applications in industrial agriculture. While herbicides pollute natural resources, pesticides are rarely selective and kill beneficial species as well, like pollinators and soil-dwelling microorganisms contributing to its fertility. Recent researches report decreased farmland bird and bee populations due to heavy insecticides in industrial agriculture, being a significant threat to further farming business and ecology in general. Hormones mitigating plant diseases are another harmful issue of intensive farming.

How does intensive farming affect the environment?

Intensive farming causes environment pollution and induces major health issues due to poisonous agents. In this regard, the impacts of industrial agriculture require serious attention and management of risks.

Why are bees and birds declining in agriculture?

Recent researches report decreased farmland bird and bee populations due to heavy insecticides in industrial agriculture , being a significant threat to further farming business and ecology in general. Hormones mitigating plant diseases are another harmful issue of intensive farming.

What does reduced diversity of crops mean?

Furthermore, reduced diversity of crops due to this fundamental industrial agriculture practice means better pest establishment and development of their resistance to controls applied. This results in extreme use of chemicals (often critical to humans and nature) and stronger option introductions.

Why are forests cut?

In particular, forests are cut for the sake of new fertile and productive areas. The problem scope becomes clear with illustrative figures. Thus, modern industrial agriculture is to blame for 80% of global deforestation. Pest and weed resistance to chemicals.

Why are remote sensing and satellite data-based agricultural platforms important?

Remote sensing and satellite data-based agricultural platforms are greatly helpful to industrial agriculture supporters, too. They enable farmers to reduce chemical allocations only to affected areas.

How does industrial farming help?

Industrial farms are also helpful in reducing food costs and making food more accessible, even for consumers who have lower incomes. Industrial agriculture uses modern technology and equipment to process meat, eggs, milk, crops, and other food items in a quick and efficient way, reducing their overhead expenses while earning more revenue …

How does industrial farming affect small business?

In most cases, industrial farms are owned by large corporations with the money to use modern tools and equipment, larger spaces, and expensive additives, allowing them to produce more food more efficiently.

Why do factory farms inject animals with antibiotics?

Factory farms inject their animals with antibiotics that are supposed to prevent them from getting sick in the unsanitary conditions they are kept in. However, bacteria can mutate and develop into illnesses that can’t be treated by antibiotics, and these illnesses are then transmitted to people who eat them. In addition to pesticide poisoning and animal-borne illnesses, the stressful environments in which animals are kept result in poor food quality as well.

What are the pros and cons of industrial agriculture?

Pros of Industrial Agriculture. 1. It increases food production. Large-scale industrial farms have an advantage over traditional farms when it comes to producing food fast and in larger amounts. This could be a good thing, considering that the world’s population continues to grow steadily. 2.

Why are cattle sprayed with pesticides?

Cattle, poultry, pigs, and other types of livestock are kept in controlled conditions that encourage rapid reproduction and weight gain, while food crops are sprayed with chemical fertilizers and pesticides to promote growth and eliminate insects and other organisms that could destroy them. There are some people—investors …

How do factory farms affect the environment?

These animals produce an overwhelming amount of waste and byproducts that are often dumped into nearby bodies of water, polluting them. The waste produced can even pollute the air, damage the ozone layer, and spread to the surrounding land, rivers, and streams.

Why are factory farms bad?

1. It increases the risk of animal cruelty. Factory farms keep animals in tight, confined areas where they don’t have the space to roam free and do what animals naturally do. In some cases, animals are kept in cages where they can’t move around at all.

Why did agriculture become industrialized?

The industrialization of agriculture began after World War II, as a way of addressing global hunger and making the food supply more efficient and safe. The global shift towards this model of farming in the last sixty years has come with many costs.

How is industrialized agriculture supported?

Industrialized agriculture is supported by taxpayer subsidies overtly by way of artificially low grain prices and tax breaks. Animal feed, a key element of industrialized agriculture, is made from corn and soybeans that are cheap for feed companies to purchase owing to government subsidies.

How did farming change?

As farms and fields were consolidating and expanding, farming methods changed too, moving towards specialization, mechanization and ever-increasing reliance on fossil fuels. Tractors and other equipment got bigger; chemical fertilizers revolutionized crop yields; improved irrigation forced dry areas into production; animals were moved into controlled confinement; and seed genes began to be spliced.

Why are sustainable farms important?

Public Health. Without the use of hazardous chemical pesticides, sustainable farms are much safer and healthier for their farmers, workers and surrounding communities, and the food they produce is free of chemical residues.

How can agriculture help farmers?

A different kind of federal agriculture policy could help farmers and taxpayers, and curb many of the worst impacts of industrialization. A policy based on supply management, which creates a grain reserve (a common sense protection against low yield years) and a floor price for farmers, would not incentivize fencerow-to-fencerow planting, making it easier for farmers to take marginal lands (land not worth farming because it would not make enough money) out of production. A 2011 analysis by Dr. Darryl Ray at the University of Tennessee showed that if a farmer-owned reserve had been in place between 1996 and 2010, rather than the patchwork subsidy system, taxpayers would have saved more than $96 billion. The Food from Family Farms Act by the National Family Farm Coalition, is one example of a farm bill proposal to reinstate reserves and fair prices, along with ecologically sustainable planting and a more secure disaster program.

How does sustainable agriculture contribute to the ecosystem?

Sustainable agriculture produce s its own inputs (fertilizer from animals, feed grown on the land) and manages its outputs (crop waste, manure) in a closed loop cycle. It contributes to soil fertility, clean water systems, biodiversity and other ecosystem services, rather than depleting them .

Why did the US industrialize agriculture?

The rationale for the industrialization of agriculture was the need to ensure a cheap, safe food supply for a rapidly growing US and world population . In some ways, that goal has been met: Americans spend just 6.4 percent of their income on food, the lowest percentage in the world; we also export inexpensive food around the world, including to food-insecure areas. 4

How does industrial agriculture affect water?

industrial operations often contaminate water sources with excess nutrients, hormone and antibiotic residue, and harmful pathogens. livestock manure has up to 30 times more power to pollute surface water than human waste 7.

What is industrial animal?

industrial animals are crammed together in confined areas or cages without access to sunlight, fresh air, or open pasture. Densely populated confinement barns limit animal movement and increase the potential for rapid spread of disease 17.

Why are sustainable farmers important?

sustainable farmers recognize the importance of protecting the natural environment and act as stewards of the land. industrial facilities contribute to numerous environmental issues such as damage to our air, water, and soil. (see these topics for more detail) overapplication of manure can lead to contamination of water.

How do sustainable farms help the economy?

sustainable farms support local economies by purchasing supplies and materials from local businesses. Owners of small, sustainable farms are actively involved in their communities, helping to build resilient rural communities. many communities are left with the cost of environmental damage 20.

How do sustainable farms help preserve genetic diversity?

sustainable farms help preserve genetic diversity by raising a wide range of animal breeds. many of these breeds are chosen due to the geographic areas in which they are raised. Industrial farms reduce genetic diversity in animals because they only raise a few selected breeds.

Why is manure over applied?

Due to high transportation costs, manure is often over-applied to fields close to the operation. Manure becomes something factory farms must dispose of instead of a fertilizer. liquid manure is often sprayed onto land and crops as raw, untreated sewage.

Why do farmers put their animals outside?

The Hole:This does not make up for the fact that in most cases, the situation is the reverse. Farmers that choose to put their animals outside and feed them a more natural diet normally have the animal’s best interests in mind. Pastured animals and heritage breeds grow much more slowly than grain-fed livestock in industrial production. Why else would these farmers choose a farming practice that as much as doubles the time it takes them to make a profit? CAFOs, on the other hand, are focused on getting the most product for as little input as possible.

Why are chicken tractors used at Heritage Farm?

These “chicken tractors” at Heritage Farm keep the animals safe from predators, but also allow them to stretch their wings outside. “Pasture is seasonal. They can only be outside for so long.”. The Kernel: In the winter, many animals have to be taken off the pasture because the grass is covered in snow.

How many acres of corn are there in the US?

Corn currently occupies almost 89 million acres in the US ( 1 ), soy a little over 84 million ( 2 ). And most of that crop isn’t even for human consumption. More than a third of our corn crop is for animal feed and about 40% is for ethanol production ( 3 ).

Why is meat so cheap?

The Hole:Two of the big reasons that conventional meat is so cheap is 1.) cheap feed and 2.) vertical integration. Feeding industrial- raised livestock is cheap for several reasons. One is that many industrial animals are fed food wastes (think kitchen scraps from big food processing companies). Another is crop subsidies, which allow industrial livestock farmers to feed their animals at an unfairly low cost. (Although, 100% grass-fed cattle and lamb farmers spend almost nothing on feed.) Vertical integration means that because a meat company, like Tyson, owns every stage of the process of chicken production (all the way from the chicken breeders to the vendor that sells the meat to the grocery store), they save a lot of money by not having to buy day-old chicks or sacrifice the mark-up from the slaughter facility. While most of these savings go into the pockets of Big Ag leaders, these savings are also what allows them to beat everyone else’s chicken prices. Yes, grass-fed beef is more costly per pound, and there’s a reason for that. It’s not necessarily that the farmers are trying to swindle you for a pound of hamburger meat. As mentioned earlier, animals on pasture, as well as heritage breeds, take a lot longer to reach finishing condition, when they are ready for slaughter. For heritage chicken or pig farmers, for example, it means they need to spend more on feed.

What are chicken tractors?

These “chicken tractors” at Heritage Farm keep the animals safe from predators, but also allow them to stretch their wings outside.

What do sheep do on Burns Angus Farm?

These sheep on Burns Angus Farm graze on the pasture, without the need for grain to be grown, fertilized, treated with pesticide, harvested and transported to the animals. What you see is what you get.

Is Amazon a pasture based farm?

More to the point, these ranchers in the Amazon are not good examples of pasture-based farming. The principles that drive a farmer to return his/her animal to pasture include environmental conservation, among other things. These ranchers in the Amazon are driven by one thing: profit.

Background

In the early 1900s, more than half of Americans were either farmers or lived in rural communities.1 Most U.S. farms were diversified, meaning they produced a variety of crops and animal species together on the same farm, in complementary ways.2Farmers were skilled in a wide range of trades and had autonomy over ho…

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Specialization

Mechanization

• Like work on an assembly line, specialized labor often involves repetitive tasks that can be performed by machines. This meant routine jobs like sowing seeds, harvesting crops, milking cows, and feeding and slaughtering animals could be mechanized, reducing (and in some cases eliminating) the need for human and animal labor. Between 1900 and 2000, …

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Chemical and Pharmaceutical Inputs

Consolidation

Market Concentration

Resources

References