what are the effects of modern farming method? Related: Short Answer ...
A. Positive Impacts:
(i) Significantly increased yield per acre, per person and per dollar relative to extensive farming and therefore,
(ii) Food becomes more affordable to the consumer as it costs less to produce.
(iv) The preservation of existing areas of woodland and rain forest habitats (and the ecosystems and other sustainable economies that these may harbour), which would need to be felled for extensive farming methods in the same geographical location. This also leads to a reduction in anthropomorphic CO2 generation (resulting from removal of the sequestration afforded by woodlands and rain forests)
(v) In case of intensive line stock farming, an opportunity to capture methane emissions which would otherwise contribute to global warming. Once captured, these emissions can be used to generate heat and electrical energy, thereby reducing local demand for fossil and fuels.
B. Negative Impacts:
(i) Limits or destroys the natural habitat of most wild creatures, and leads to soil erosion.
(ii) 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.
(iii) Pesticides generally kill useful insects as well as those destroy crops.
(iii) The same area of land is able to supply food and fibre for a larger population reducing the risk of starvation.
(iv ) Is often not sustainable if not properly managed-may result in desertification, or land that is 20 poisonous and eroded that nothing else will grow there.
(v) Requires large amounts of energy input to produce, transport and apply chemical fertilizers/pesticides,
(vi) The chemicals used may leave the field as run off eventually ending up in rivers and lakes or may drain into groundwater aquifers.
(vii) Use of pesticides have numerous negative health effects in workers who apply them, people that line nearby the area of application or downstream/downwind from it, and consumers who eat the pesticides which remain on their food.