The Environmental Impacts of Agriculture

With the recent growth of environmental awareness, many of us are conscious of our actions and decisions in everyday life and how they may contribute to our personal impact on our environment. Food is something we all require to live and somewhat take for granted. Few of us really think about the impact the production of our food might be having on our environment.

It has been argued that agriculture is one of the first human impacts on the earth. Agriculture is defined as the cultivation of domesticated plants and animals for use by human societies. Evidence of domestication of plants and animals suggests that it began over 10,000 years ago. This marks the time when mankind’s relationship with nature changed as the value and usefulness of nature was realised.

Agriculture enabled human population growth and since it has intensified, mechanised and revolutionised the population has been allowed to continue its uncontrollable growth. But not without having detrimental effects on the environment.

The intensification of agriculture has caused the production of food to move from using solar energy to using energy derived from fossil fuels. The green revolution was made possible by fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation. The mechanisation of agriculture meant fossil fuels provided energy for agriculture rather than solar derived human energy and massively increased the rate at which resources were sucked from the earth.

As the population increases further, the amount of fossil fuels we are ‘eating’ increases. The non-renewable nature of fossil fuels makes this highly unsustainable and global food insecurity is increasing as a result. Intensive agriculture is effectively draining the earth of so many of its natural resources.

Throughout this blog I hope to highlight the impacts of agriculture and assess its sustainability and potential to support future population growth. Has the human population reached the earths carrying capacity? Or was that breached a long time ago, thanks to the green revolution? Can further technical innovation solve the problem of our diminishing natural resources? 




Gupta, A.K. (2004) Origins of agriculture and domestication of plants and animals linked to early Holocene climate amelioration, current science, 87,10,54-59
Pfeifer, D.A. (2004) Eating Fossil Fuels,  From The Wilderness Publications