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Farm Business
Agricultural Matters
Hi, anyone ever grown animals and crops together?
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<blockquote data-quote="ollie989898" data-source="post: 9022503" data-attributes="member: 54866"><p>Humans spend a lot of time and use a great deal of land farming certain crops which are environmentally deleterious for whatever reason. I will provide some examples of these unintended side-effects.</p><p></p><p>1. Rice. A <em>lot</em> of rice is cultivated using wetland/paddy techniques because it provides impressive yields per unit area from relatively low input requirements meaning it is a big deal in developing countries. However, this method of cultivation involves flooding large areas with water for many months at a time. This is a big emitter of greenhouse gases because flooding land means anaerobic decomposition occurs over many many thousands of hectares of land.</p><p></p><p>2. Some more specialist crops such as cotton or almonds are grown in areas where there is a local or regional shortage of water and so crops must be watered by irrigation. This is a big deal in terms of environmental damage long term because you're spending energy to move water and mismanaged irrigation can seriously mess with soil chemistry.</p><p></p><p>3. The persistence of growing crops in near monoculture is not helpful to some species because there is a lack of variety in habitat, nesting sites and food supplies. For example, if you grow nothing but apples, all the trees flower at a particular time of year after which there is no flowering fauna for bees and other insects to use as a food supply. This affects other parts of the ecosystem adversely.</p><p></p><p>4. The use of vast areas of land only growing one particular crop is a boon for pest organisms like European corn borer because it can proliferate across vast areas in numbers that won't be controlled by predators.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ollie989898, post: 9022503, member: 54866"] Humans spend a lot of time and use a great deal of land farming certain crops which are environmentally deleterious for whatever reason. I will provide some examples of these unintended side-effects. 1. Rice. A [I]lot[/I] of rice is cultivated using wetland/paddy techniques because it provides impressive yields per unit area from relatively low input requirements meaning it is a big deal in developing countries. However, this method of cultivation involves flooding large areas with water for many months at a time. This is a big emitter of greenhouse gases because flooding land means anaerobic decomposition occurs over many many thousands of hectares of land. 2. Some more specialist crops such as cotton or almonds are grown in areas where there is a local or regional shortage of water and so crops must be watered by irrigation. This is a big deal in terms of environmental damage long term because you're spending energy to move water and mismanaged irrigation can seriously mess with soil chemistry. 3. The persistence of growing crops in near monoculture is not helpful to some species because there is a lack of variety in habitat, nesting sites and food supplies. For example, if you grow nothing but apples, all the trees flower at a particular time of year after which there is no flowering fauna for bees and other insects to use as a food supply. This affects other parts of the ecosystem adversely. 4. The use of vast areas of land only growing one particular crop is a boon for pest organisms like European corn borer because it can proliferate across vast areas in numbers that won't be controlled by predators. [/QUOTE]
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Hi, anyone ever grown animals and crops together?
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