PDS AP Environmental Science 5th Period 2011-12

Alrighty, so I know that meat production can be split up into CAFOs and free range, however, I noticed that there is also traditional agriculture mentioned in the book. Traditional agriculture can be classified as shifting agriculture or nomadic grazing. I was wondering if any, which category traditional agriculture would fit in. It seems that it would lean towards the Free Range category, but I was wondering if maybe it’s actually just it’s own category all together. It seems like these systems wouldn’t be used for mass production but rather the family farm or maybe a small town. What do you guys think?

I was just looking at the pros and cons of aquacultures and I was a little confused about what the positives were. The only thing that I could find is that it alleviates human caused pressure on overexploiting resources. I’m not really sure what that means or why that is different then fisheries. And I also don’t know any other positives than that and I was wondering if anyone had found more.

Kinda weird to discuss fishing/aquaculture in an agriculture unit? Well, we do get some calories from the water so yes! Today we watched a good bit of the PBS documentary Empty Oceans, Empty Nets. Feel free to click around the movie web site if you want want to explore the issues further. What were the main points?

1. The Problem. Yes, we seem to be overfishing the oceans. In the last 4 years, numerous articles have come out predicting the collapse of most commercial fisheries by 2050. If you have 5 minutes, read this very current article cleverly titled, “Aquacalypse Now: The End of Fish.” This brief public service announcement give some reasons WHY this is happening and what we might do about it.

2. Causes. As mentioned in the PSA above, many of the “industrial” fishing methods used by large vessels or factory ships have the potential to remove fish from our oceans in massive quantities. Check out the animations at this Monterery Bay Aquarium web site of bottom-trawling, longlining, and purse-seine fishing techniques. Additionally, each of these method capture different types of bycatch (bykill). The movie we watched stated that for every pound of shrimp caught in the US fisheries, there may be five pounds of bycatch! Sometimes, it may include endangered animals like sea turtles.

US Fishing Methods

Image source: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_gear.aspx

3. Solutions: We saw several solutions throughout the film-we just did not get to discuss them today.

• Since this is a commons issue (oceans fisheries), governments can regulate fisheries by setting quotas in their territorial waters. Anything involving species migrating across oceans and/or beyond those 200 miles offshore has to be addressed by international treaty, but enforcement becomes problematic.
• Governments can establish marine protected areas (MPAs), marine reserves, or marine sanctuaries in their territorial waters. Check this link for the US system of MPAs. These are safe areas for fish to hide and breed as fishing there is usually banned. Remember, government regulation is ONE solution to The Tragedy of the Commons…
• Consumers can create more demand for fish taken from sustainable fisheries. If you care about making a personal impact by your seafood choices then you can download a pocket guide from this web site. There is also an app for mobile phones/ iPhones at that link.

Sustainable Seafood Guide

Image source: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/download.aspx

Much of this is covered in your text, but I think it is hard to really appreciate the impact of these commercial scale fishing methods unless you SEE them.

Hey, I took over some scribe duties since it was so close to the test. While King Corn focused on industrialized corn crop production and the many issues it produces, the movie also touches on problems created when we feed all that corn to cows (who did not evolved to eat it) in industrial feedlots or factory farms or CAFOs. If you were out, here is a brief lesson..

First, watch this short, hilarious clip called “The Meatrix” that raises some of the issues created by feedlots:

*Trouble viewing video clip here, try this link-you can even find sequels!

Second, here is a good summary post by former APE Kevin Chu (’10):

“We are what we eat. For Americans that means we eat a lot of processed foods. When you pick up a bag of potato chips, its easy to see that the product is unnatural, the chip didn’t fry itself and dip it in oil man did that. But what about the meat we eat? In class today we talked about how the meat production industry has changed since the early 1980′s, about the mechanism that replaced the stereotypical small farmer, CAFO’s.

CAFO’s, or Condensed Agriculture Feed Operations (a.k.a. feedlots)is brain child of antibiotics and genetically modified corn. GM corn allows for cheap feed for cows, while antibiotics allows for livestock to bypass population density inhibitors along with an increased growth rate. What this means is that we can now feed more cows, aka produce more meet in less room. That may sound like a simple achievement, but these adjustments allowed for a much higher rate of meat production than other farming methods by fencing animals as tightly as possible, and fattening them as fast as possible.

Just because the CAFO business is booming doesn’t mean that grass fed cattle operations don’t exist. There are still farmers who feed livestock on open pastures or fenced ranged land. But compared to CAFO, the output is so low, increasing pricing that grass fed operations only operate a small consumer niche of the market. Although economic incentives are virtually nonexistent in this market, there are ecological and personal incentives to eat grass fed.

As mentioned in King Corn, the ratio of saturated fat per t-bone in grass fed to corn fed is 1.5 to 9, which helps explain rising obesity rates. This along with the fact that cows aren’t meant to eat corn brings up some potential health issues. Other than health issues, by using feedlots, though we are conserving biodiversity by using less land, we promote other environmental issues. With high production of meat comes high production of manure, and methane(global warming gas). Although manure could be a plus since it could be used for fertilizer, with the sheer amount of manure produced by all the cattle, shipping all the manure is not possible and a fair amount of manure will end up traveling down watersheds and causing algae bloom in bodies of water. With high antibiotic use, people worry about the potential of feedlots breeding super drug resistant strains of bacteria also.

Criticism of CAFO’s are different in every country. In Europe, the precautionary principle came first, so GMO’s have been banned along with use of steroids on cattle, destroying CAFO’s. America on the other hand, has embraced the technology producing tons upon tons of corn beef. With no strong health benefits there is no clear winner. I just hope China has grass fed beef, so I don’t have to worry about ulcered cow stomach meat.”

Kevin even made this nifty chart-click to enlarge.

Good soil is key for good crops, as it provides plants with nutrients, moisture control, and a stable foundation so that they can grow. However, in a “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” sort of way, both plants and our method of farming them damage, or degrade, the soil that is so necessary for their vitality. In this post, we’ll take a look at the process of soil degradation, as well as solutions, otherwise known as soil conservation.

Characteristics of Soil Degradation:

• Erosion – often caused by wind and water, surface soil is transported via these agents to other areas, and the structural integrity of the ground is altered (See video from class below)
• Desertification – when fertile agricultural lands become desert (common in China’s Gobi Desert and the Sahara)
• Salinization – the accumulation of salts, usually caused by irrigation systems
• Waterlogging – when water builds up in soil because it cannot drain properly

Various Types of Erosion

Soil Conservation:

• 1935 Soil Conservation Act – created in order to diminish the effects of soil erosion, especially in “The Dust Bowl”, gives advice and aid to farmers regarding soil management and conservation
• 1985 Food Security Act - encouraged farmers to set aside exhausted and overused soil, as well as to implement better farming methods
• No-Till Soil – dead plant material is left on the ground after harvest, leaving more natural, organic material instead of using fertilizers
• Terracing/Contour Farming – ground is tilled in stair-stepping pattern/ground is tilled parallel to natural slopes of land, both methods reduce erosion and runoff
• Strip Cropping/Agroforestry – methods used to reduce the effects of wind erosion
• Reduction of Irrigation/Implementation of Salt-Tolerant Crops - reduces the effects of salinization

Various Types of Farming

Soil is a renewable resource but, when the process of soil creation is done naturally, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years. However, if humans can accelerate the process responsibly, it will insure that this resource stays renewable, while also benefiting ourselves by providing us a medium in which to grow our food.

Alum Richard Gee (’10) recently sent me this link to a The Economist article and map about which countries are growning genetically modified crops. I wish we had more time to spend on GMOs, but it was not meant to be this year. I’m not too concerned for you all on the AP exam as GMOs made it as a free response topic two years ago, so I doubt it will come around again this soon. Interesting regardless as this is becoming more prevalent as industrialized agriculture spreads. Key points from the brief article:

As can be seen in our map, GM technology has been enthusiastically embraced in the Americas and in many Asian countries. By contrast, many European countries are subject to severe restrictions on growing GM crops. Developing countries are planting GM crops at a more rapid rate than rich countries.

Click to enlarge the image.

GMO Crop Production by Country

If you missed last Thursday and/or Friday, we finished watching King Corn. To recap, two Yale graduates made a documentary released in 2007 about growing an acre of corn in Iowa using methods of industrialized agriculture. You can borrow the DVD from me, or watch it on hulu.

We took a few moments to review the “high inputs” needed for industrialized crop and meat production featured in the film:

Click to Enlarge

I reminded folks that you must know the environmental impacts (“outputs”) that result from this type of agriculture. We did not take class time to review each of them, but they are detailed in your text.

We concluded the class by looking at the solution: organic agriculture.

Click to Enlarge

What is ironic is that it took the 1990 Organic Food Production Act to make legal a certification for the type of agriculture that was the norm before the Green Revolution. Organic agriculture is “low input” compared to industrialized agriculture, and the goal is sustainability. You can see the US standards for the USA Organic label here. Here are a few clips that show farms in England meeting the EU organic standard:

If you want to support local (less fossil fuels expended to deliver the calories), organic food you can always visit a area farmers market.

Today, we were introduced to food production. We began the class by looking at pictures from the book, Hungry Planet. The pictures showed what a typical family from a certain country would eat or drink in a week. Below, Ecuador is pictured. Ecuador is interesting because, as one can tell from the picture, there is little packaging and no meat.

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/07/hungry-planet-what-world-eats-by-peter.html

And while Ecuador has little packaging and no meat, a typical United States family consumes a large amount of packaged and processed food. Also, a typical US family eats a sizeable amount of meat. The food and drink consumption of one US family for a week is pictured below.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2009/03/10/hungry-planet/

Germany (pictured below) also goes through a lot of packaging and meat in a week.

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/07/hungry-planet-what-world-eats-by-peter.html

And while the US and Germany clearly have a lot of bottled drinks, Mexico has even more because they have water issues. Mexico, as seen from the picture below, must purchase jugs of water and drink a lot of Coca-Cola because it is safer than drinking their local water.

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/07/hungry-planet-what-world-eats-by-peter.html

Lastly, we looked a Chad–a country whose typical household food and drink consumption is far different from the other countries. This is because, in Chad, subsistence farming is very common. Chad makes Ecuador look much more fulfilling than it first looked.

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/07/hungry-planet-what-world-eats-by-peter.html

After looking at these pictures we concluded that the demographic transition is responsible for the difference between a country like the United States and developing countries like Chad and Ecuador. More subsistence farming is performed in countries like Chad and Ecuador, and this is why they go through less packaging and meat. Meanwhile, in developed countries with a lot of urban areas, citizens give up land and instead buy food from what’s offered at their local stores/supermarkets. If you are still confused on this topic, the following article from Time magazine might be helpful: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1626795_1627112_1626671,00.html

After analyzing the Hungry Planet pictures, we discussed food systems. As seen in the picture below, the Earth is comprised of about 25% land and 75% water. Of the land that is present on the earth, 38% is used in food production–accounting for 93% of calories. And calories come from one of two types of land: crops come from croplands and meat comes from  rangelands. Meanwhile, the 7% of calories that come from water come from either fisheries or aquaculture. Fisheries can be enormous; the Atlantic Ocean is an example of a fishery. It seems kind of crazy, but there is no limit to the size of a fishery.

After discussing food systems, we categorized farming. A helpful diagram is pasted below. 80% of farming is considered industrialized. And while it’s kind of an oxymoron, industrialized farming is also called conventional farming. This category has a couple of traits: a large amount of resources are used, it is considered monoculture farming, and it is very detrimental to the environment. Meanwhile, the other 20% of farming is considered traditional. Traditional farming is subsistence farming, which, as we discussed earlier, is far more prevalent in developing countries. And while industrialized/conventional farming is a monoculture technique, traditional farming is a polyculture technique.

Lastly, we began a video entitled King Corn. The main point of the video thus far is that we are what we eat. For example, the United States is becoming a largely corn-based society and the carbon (which makes up most of our body) originates from corn. So, clearly, we are quite literally what we eat. As discussed in the video, a single strand of hair is comprised largely of corn. To watch the full video, go to the following website: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi3505429529/