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Intensive Farming




Modern day forms of intensive crop based agriculture involve the use of mechanical ploughing, chemical Fertilizer s, Herbicide s, Fungicide s, Insecticide s, plant growth regulators and/or Pesticide s. It is associated with the increasing use of Agricultural Mechanization , which have enabled a substantial increase in production.

Intensive animal farming practices can involve very large numbers of animals raised on limited land which require large amounts of food, water and medical inputs (required to keep the animals healthy in cramped conditions).. Very large or confined indoor intensive livestock operations (particularly descriptive of common US farming practices) are often referred to as Factory Farming Factory farming. Webster's Dictionary definition of Factory farming Encyclopaedia Britannica's definition of Factory farm and are criticised by opponents for the low level of animal welfare standards The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs and associated pollution and health issues. Commissioner points to factory farming as source of contamination Rebuilding Agriculture - EPA of UK


ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES



Advantages

Intensive agriculture has a number of benefits Encyclopaedia Britannica - Intensive Agriculture :
  • Significantly increased yield per available space than extensive farming

  • Often leads to cheaper priced products



Disadvantages

Intensive farming alters the environment in many ways.

  • Removal of buffers to make large fields for maximum efficiency leading to lower food costs and greater food availability to the poor. But it also limits the natural habitat of some wild creatures and can lead to soil erosion.

  • Use of Fertilizers can alter the biology of Rivers and Lakes . Some environmentalists attribute the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico as being encouraged by nitrogen fertilization of the algae bloom.

  • Pesticides can kill useful insects as well as the those that destroy crops.



PRE MODERN INTENSIVE FARMING

Pre modern intensive farming techniques and structures include Terracing , Rice Paddies , and various forms of Aquaculture .


Oysters

"Oysters were likely the first sea animal to be transported from one area to another and cultivated as food. The ancient world, while knowing little about the reproduction of oysters, knew much about the conditions necessary for their growth. Pliny the Elder, a noted Roman naturalist of the first century, has left an account of artificial oyster beds established in Lake Lucrinus near Naples by a Sergius Orata about 95 B.C. Orata's methods consisted of preparing the grounds by removing other forms of marine life, planting seed oysters, cultivating the oysters by keeping them separated in order to grow to a well-formed, mature size, and finally harvesting them when they were ready for market. Modern oyster farming, based on the knowledge of oyster biology, basically follows the Roman procedure." Fisheries and Oceans Canada article ''American Oyster''


Terrace

See Also: Terrace (agriculture)


In Agriculture , a Terrace is a leveled section of a Hill y cultivated area, designed as a method of Soil Conservation to slow or prevent the rapid Surface Runoff of Irrigation water. Often such land is formed into multiple terraces, giving a stepped appearance. The human landscapes of Rice cultivation in terraces that follow the natural contours of the escarpments like Contour Plowing is a classic feature of the island of Bali and the Banaue Rice Terraces in Benguet , Philippines . In Peru , the Inca made use of otherwise unusable slopes by Drystone Wall ing to create terraces.


Rice paddy

See Also: Paddy field


A paddy field is a flooded parcel of generation is a large component of the Global Warming threat and derives simply from An Expanding Human Population .

Rice-farming and the use of paddies in Korea is ancient. Korean paddy-farming can provide cultural background on the use of paddies in Northeast Asia . A pit-house at the Daecheon-ni site yielded carbonized rice grains and radiocarbon dates indicating that rice cultivation may have begun as early as the Middle Jeulmun Pottery Period (c. 3500-2000 B.C.) in the Korean Peninsula (Crawford and Lee 2003). The earliest rice cultivation in the Korean Peninsula may have used dry-fields instead of paddies.

The earliest Mumun features were usually located in low-lying narrow gulleys that were naturally swampy and fed by the local stream system. Some Mumun paddies in flat areas were made of a series of squares and rectangles separated by bunds approximately 10 cm in height, while terraced paddies consisted of long irregularly shapes that followed natural contours of the land at various levels (Bale 2001; Kwak 2001).

Mumun Period rice farmers used all of the elements that are present in today's paddies such terracing, bunds, canals, and small reservoirs. We can grasp some paddy-farming techniques of the Middle Mumun (c. 850-550 B.C.) from the well-preserved wooden tools excavated from archaeological rice paddies at the Majeon-ni Site. However, Iron tools for paddy-farming were not introduced until sometime after 200 B.C. The spatial scale of individual paddies, and thus entire paddy-fields, increased with the regular use of Iron tools in the Three Kingdoms Of Korea Period (c. A.D. 300/400-668).


MODERN INTENSIVE FARMING TYPES

See Also: Industrial agriculture


Modern intensive farming refers to the Industrialized production of animals (livestock, poultry and fish) and Crops . The methods deployed are designed to produce the highest output at the lowest cost; usually using economies of scale, modern machinery, modern medicine, and Global Trade for financing, purchases and sales. The practice is widespread in Developed Nation s, and most of the Meat , Dairy , Egg s, and crops available in Supermarket s are produced in this manner.


Intensive Aquaculture

See Also: Aquaculture


Aquaculture is the cultivation of the natural produce of Water ( Fish , Shellfish , Algae , Seaweed and other aquatic organisms). Intensive Aquaculture can often involve tanks or other highly controlled systems which are designed to boost production for the available volume or area of water resource. American Heritage Definition of Aquaculture McGraw Hill Sci-Tech Encyclopedia


Intensive Livestock Farming

See Also: Factory farming


The modern examples of intensive farming are broadly referred to as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or often termed Factory Farming . These include:


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