Problems of high tech farming

Irrigation (problem 1)= salinisation

Constant irrigation leads to salinisation of soil, how this happen is the water contains minerals (salt). When the water evaporates or used up by the plants, minerals (salt) are left behind on the soil.

Over time, the mineral (salt) build up and causes the soil to be too salty to grow. Imagine drinking saltwater everyday, you will end up looking like dried fish!

Irrigation (problem 2)= waterlogging

The other problem is when the soil is soaked up with too much water and the water can flow into ground anymore, this will lead to flooding.

Chemical fertiliser = eutrophication

As shown in class, when there is too much nutrients flowing from farmland to the river during rainfall, the nutrients are absorb by the algae living in the water, this leads to an algae bloom. When the nutrient level drops, alot of the algae will die, leading to a sharp rise in CO2 and excess nutrients in the water, this could also lead to poisoning of the water. This in turn will kill the ecosystem in the river. Textbook not very accurate.

Chemical pesticide and hebicide = water pollution

Like fertiliser, this also gets washed into the river. Take a guess what happens after that. Not sure? Go drink some pesticide and then tell me.

GM food = Potential health issues

We are not completely certain that GM food are the cause of concern on a large scale. However some modifications can cause allergy. Saying that, almost 90% of the food you eat are GM.

GM food = loss of biodiversity

Big issues rising from GM food is that plants can cause cross pollination with local plants that could make them pest resistant, meaning insects that are native to the area will die over time. In time animals that depend on the insects for food or other plants need them for pollination will suffer in decline. This is known as gene pollution.

Worst, the plants become superweeds, this makes them a pest plant as it is becomes very hard to remove them.

On the financial aspect:

GM food are not cheap!

This means LDC will have problems implementing them with government or international support establishing and maintaining GM food production in the early years.

Another issue rises when LDC are able to produce GM food, they are mainly producing cash crops such as coffee, oil palm and the likes. This becomes an issue as the locals that work in the agricultural sector will not have or afford a balanced diet. The lack of education in getting a balanced diet also comes into play. This will lead to malnutrition.

CHECK page 283 to 285 of your textbook! THAT IS AWESOME STUFF! just take my information on eutrophication from my blog.

Blue Revolution, the fishy way of farming

Blue revolution is really easy and I going to break it down into a few key points:

1. Fish are grown in artificial ponds where water quality, temperature and food are controlled, leading to increase in productivity.

2. This helps to reduce fish prices and ensure increase stable supply of fishes.

TADAHH!

Development of food-the high tech way (Green Revolution)

Under green revolution, the key components are:

1. Machinery

2. irrigation

3. GM food like HYV rice.

4. Chemical (fertiliser, pesticide and herbicide)

1. Machinery =

Under food development, machinery help to increase productivity by reducing labour demand. As productivity can be measured by:

labour per unit area = number of workers/land area

By using machinery, this automatically reduces the demand for workers. However the cost of purchasing the machinery might hamper production cost.

As machinery also helps to reduce time to grow and harvest crops, more area can be covered for farming which also leads to increase in productivity given a certain time frame.

2. irrigation=

As water is important to the growth of plants, the use of irrigation helps to supply water to areas where it would normally been impossible to grow or water. Examples of irrigation are digging of channels from the river and using generators to pump water from a water source.

3. GM food

GM food help to increase productivity as they can produce more crops in a given area compared to normal plants. the reason is that each plant can produce larger fruits or more grains than normally.

Read up on HYV rice and their benefits especially on their immunity, increased number of grains, more drought and flood tolerant.

Output per unit area= amount of food produced/ land area

4. Chemical (fertiliser, pesticide and herbicide)=

However, alot of these GM plants also require alot more water and fertiliser to grow. hence the need for irrigation and chemical fertiliser.

The plants too also do not evolve their immunity and they need pesticide to curb potential new threats.

The use of herbicide too also is important as they may not be able to compete with native invasive plants for space, sunlight and water.

Food production

I am not going to go into details here, but I am going to break down for you how you should separate your information in this diagram. Fill up the information accordingly to each part. I will go into greater details with GR and BR in my next post.

Consmption of Food

There are 4 factors for you all to learn which are the
following:
1. Accessiblity
2. Availability
3. Affordability
4. Food security
In EMERGING LDC, there is a growing trend for more MEAT.

In DC, there is an increase trend for more HEALTH conscious and ORGANIC food.
The food related diseases, SOM:

1. Starvation = in 3rd world LDC likeSomalia
2. Obesity = in DC like USA and 313.
3. Malnutrition = both in LDC and DC. In DC, it isthe poor balanced diet (more carbohydrate and meat) and in LDC, it is the lackof food.

Food consumption per capita =

Total amount of food consume in a place/Number of people in that place