Negative Impact of Modern Agriculture

Agriculture is the art and science of cultivating the soil, growing crops and raising livestock. Agriculture started about 11,500 years ago. By 2,000 years ago much of the population had become dependent on it. Thousand of years ago agricultural development was slow. Modern agriculture is a term that used to describe production practice that farmer used. More than ninety percent of farmer practice modern agriculture. The basic features of modern agricultural techniques are HYV seeds, irrigation, pesticides, and multiple cropping. Modern agriculture has negative impact on the soils and the environment.

Environmental impacts have increased including potential degradation of the soil. These environmental problems can play a huge role with us having enough soils to feed the humans in the upcoming year.

There are many negative impacts of modern agricultural practice. Pesticide usage is a negative impact. They commonly use chemical pesticide in the modern agriculture, but their negative impacts are hardly ever considered in environmental of foods product. The purpose of using pesticides is to maintain yield and quality.

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There is the benefit for using particle like the reduction in losses because of pest but there also concern on the use of pesticide costly and frequently. There is a different alternative like either mechanical or manual methods of weed control. The problem with the mechanical method it requires more energy and it increase the soil erosion and sediment in water. The problem with the manual method it requires an able and willing labor force. The increase in pesticide can decrease the tillage system and it also decrease the total energy requirement.

The increase can also reduce soil erosion.

Soil erosion is another impact of negative impacts of modern agriculture. Soil erosion is caused by water, wind, or tillage. Soil erosion is when pesticide or other chemical get trapped in the soil and the soil particle loose up and get blow or wash away and end up in the valley or lands or washed away to oceans by rivers and streams. Soil erosion increases by human activities such as agriculture or deforestation. Farming activities such as tillage play a significant contribution to soil erosion. The outcome of soil erosion is reduced agricultural productivity, soil degradation, and the possible of desertification. Soil erosion can also depend on soil type. The natural ecosystem has contributed to increasing soil erosion and losing soil nutrients. Overstocking has led to reduced ground and breaks down the soil particle, giving room for erosion to speeding up the erosive effects by wind and rain. Agricultural practice such as burning also reduce the overall vegetation cover.

However, because of deforestation and destroyed vegetation cover reduced the lack of lands cover and increase of soil erosion. The effect of soil erosion is mainly centered on reduced agricultural productivity as well as soil quality. It also affects loss of arable land, water pollution and clogging waterway, air pollution, destruction of infrastructure, sedimentation and threat to aquatic systems, and desertification. Lands used for crop production have been effect soil erosion. The soil erosion eats away the topsoil which is a fertile layer of the land. Due to soil erosion, most of the soil characteristic that support agriculture have been lost. Agriculture land that care pesticide, heavy metals, and fertilize because soil erode which are washed in the rivers or streams that lead to water pollution. The water quality of various streams and rivers been deteriorated as a result of soil erosion. Wind erosion picks up dust particles from the soil, which causes air pollution. Soil erosion is also a major concern of desertification. Due to the transformations by the destructive use of the land and deforestation that leaves the soil naked and open to erosion. To reduce soil erosion farmers plant trees and grass to cover the soil. Plants help to prevent wind and water erosion by cover the soils with there roots.

Chemical fertilizer is a negative impact of modern agricultural practice. Chemical fertilizer is used to raise the level of nutrient found in the soil. Chemical fertilizer improves the growth in plants and increase the yield in fruit and vegetable in short time but there are also disadvantage in using it. The disadvantage in using chemical fertilizer is ground water pollution, soil friability effect, and destruction of micro-organisms. Chemical fertilizer can also cause leaching. Leaching is hazardous to groundwater and health of subsoils where these chemicals react with clay to create hard layers of soil known as hardpan. When this happen, it results in jeopardized the water and health soils. Soil friability effect is when the number of acids in the soil, such as hydrochloric and sulfuric acids, creates a damaging effect on soil. The different acid in the soil dissolve the soil crumbs. Chemical fertilizer destroys the soil crumbs which results compacted soil with reduced drainage and air circulation. The synthetic chemicals in the chemical fertilizers adversely affect the health of naturally found soil micro-organisms by affecting the soil ph. (Safaraz,2017). Due to chemical fertilizer it threated the health of bacteria that fix the nitrogen balance in the soil.