Agriculture and Environment

Environmental factors and agricultural activities are known to impact each other, as is well in the case of clear felling of forests to make way for plantations or mining of    by heavy machinery or continuous use of chemicals to increase food out put or poorly constructed irrigation systems that cause of the soil. Similarly agriculture can come under severe threat due to in external environment as in global warming. There is overwhelming evidence that human -induced green house gas emissions are contributing to a warming of the climate and in rainfall patterns.

Agriculture has been a science and an art and now more and more a food production has been the main goal of agriculture as seen in the earlier days by integrating crop cultivation with livestock, forestry, water and energy. Agriculture takes place within a complex system of social attitudes, cultural framework, encompassing physical, chemical and biological factors. Therefore environment in the agricultural setting is defined to include the people, animals, plants, and all other flora and fauna. Agricultural development charges to the system toward increasing production. Understanding the principles eco-system functions is important to judge the impact on the environment affected by agriculture.

Though agriculture been practiced over thousands of years, the recent trends in agricultural practices have caused enormous' damage to the environment. This includes the high external chemical intensive agriculture to biotechnology and genetic engineering, which have a different impact on the Environment. 

In the same vein growing urbanization has caused emission of green house gases resulting in global warming and changes in weather patterns. Three gases -dioxide, oxide and methane - account for most of the emissions in global warning. Global warming is also leading to natural disasters such as cyclones hurricanes. Agriculture is itself a source of  green house gases as is observed in increased carbon dioxide emission from land use  change, including deforestation, nitrous oxides from fertilizer use and methane from rice cultivation.

The paper explores the  interaction and impact of agriculture on environment and vice versa.