'Intensive farming' or 'intensive agriculture' is an
agricultural production system characterized by the high
inputs of
capital or
labour relative to land area.
[1][2] This is in contrast to the concept of
Extensive Agriculture which involves a low input of materials and labour with the
crop yield depending largely on the naturally available
soil fertility,
water supply or other land qualities.
[3]
A potato field
Modern day forms of intensive crop based agriculture involve the use of mechanical ploughing, chemical
fertilizers,
herbicides,
fungicides,
insecticides, plant growth regulators and/or
pesticides. 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).
2. Very large or confined indoor intensive livestock operations (particularly descriptive of common US farming practices) are often referred to as
Factory farming[4]1[5] and are criticised by opponents for the low level of animal welfare standards
and associated pollution and health issues.
[7][8]
Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
Intensive agriculture has a number of benefits
[9]:
★ 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."
[10]
Terrace
Main articles: Terrace (agriculture)
In
agriculture, a
terrace is a leveled section of a
hilly 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 walling to create terraces.
Rice paddy
Main articles: Paddy field
A 'paddy field' is a flooded parcel of
arable land used for growing
rice and other
semiaquatic crops. Paddy fields are a typical feature of
rice-growing countries of
east and
southeast Asia including
Malaysia,
China,
Sri Lanka,
Myanmar,
Thailand,
Korea,
Japan,
Vietnam,
Taiwan,
Indonesia,
India, and the
Philippines. They are also found in other rice-growing regions such as
Piedmont (Italy), the
Camargue (France) and the
Artibonite Valley (Haiti). They can occur naturally along
rivers or
marshes, or can be constructed, even on hillsides, often with much
labor and materials. They require large quantities of
water for
irrigation, which can be quite complex for a highly developed system of paddy fields. Flooding provides water essential to the growth of the crop. It also gives an environment favourable to the strain of rice being grown, and is hostile to many
species of
weeds. As the only
draft animal species which is adapted for life in
wetlands, the
water buffalo is in widespread use in Asian rice paddies. There are significant adverse environmental impacts from rice paddy cultivation due to the generation of large quantities of
methane gas. World methane production due to rice paddies has been estimated in the range of 50 to 100 million tonnes per annum;
[11] this level of
greenhouse gas 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
Main articles: 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 nations, and most of the
meat,
dairy,
eggs, and crops available in
supermarkets are produced in this manner.
Intensive Aquaculture
Main articles: 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.
[12][13]
Intensive Livestock Farming
Main articles: 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:
★
Intensive pig farming or Intensive piggery farming
★ Large scale
chicken farms
★
Cattle feed lots
See also
★
Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture
★
Permaculture
★
Polyculture
★
Green Revolution
★
System of Rice Intensification
References
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica's definition of Intensive Agriculture
2. BBC School fact sheet on intensive farming
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica's definition of Extensive Agriculture
4. Factory farming. Webster's Dictionary definition of Factory farming
5. Encyclopaedia Britannica's definition of Factory farm
6. The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs
7. Commissioner points to factory farming as source of contamination
8. Rebuilding Agriculture - EPA of UK
9. Encyclopaedia Britannica - Intensive Agriculture
10. Fisheries and Oceans Canada article ''American Oyster''
11. Methane gas generation from rice paddies
12. American Heritage Definition of Aquaculture
13. McGraw Hill Sci-Tech Encyclopedia
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