- Soil erosion
- Methane and greenhouse gas emissions from machinery and animals
- Pollution from pesticides and fertilizers
- Agricultural run off into water supplies and protected water habitats
- Clearing of natural areas for agricultural use, cutting of trees, destruction of wet lands.
Run of from farm land that carries animal waste and crop water makes it into public water systems and wild aquatic habitats. This run of often contains antibiotics from the animals urine and feces as well as pesticides and unhealthy amounts of mineral build up from fertilizers.
As seen from the chart below, the annual amount of methane gas that is produced in North America just from animal waste is outstanding. While it doesn't hold a candle to the greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and factories, agriculture still contributes greatly to the total greenhouse gas emissions annually. If emissions data from machinery used on large scale industrial farming were included the number would undoubtedly increase dramatically.
Academic paper on the impact of pesticides on the ecosystem and human health
This paper gives evidence that the pesticide residue on food is the greatest danger to human health with toxicity amounts high above that in drinking water or from inhalation.
Excellent Site on the impacts of large scale farming and possible ways to make it more sustainable HERE
DATA ON NORTH AMERICAN AGRICULTURE FROM 2003-2009
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)
All charts and figures are original and may not be duplicated. To view complete raw data select from link below.
Raw Agriculture Data for North America
Methane Production by Animal
Nice synthesis graphs! Maybe make them bigger? I can't read some of the axes information.
ReplyDeleteSources well cited.
Your effort is noticed. :)
Click on the images to make them bigger. Any bigger than this on the page and it screws up the formatting of the template.
DeleteThe graphs look good, I'm just wondering about how the clear comparison between the US, Canada, and Mexico factors into all this. Is there some different way these countries are behaving when it comes to agriculture, that you believe will have a big impact on the environment (for example, the US exports a lot of its food)? A very convincing graph for this point would be agriculture as a proportion of total CO2 emissions. You mention a lot of points in your paragraphs that don't have concrete statistics. Throw those in, and this page should be set. :)
ReplyDeleteI like how you have tabs with different topics at the top. Website is easy to navigate and user friendly. I like that you started off with bulletins first, to get the general idea out. It's hard sometimes when websites have paragraphs and paragraphs of information from the beginning which makes the audience lose interest in the topic.
ReplyDeleteGood job on having original graphs! :)
Great graphs! Make them a little bigger so the viewer can see what the axes are labeled as.
ReplyDeleteLots of great information, and a solid foundation. The website is laid out very well and everything flows very nicely. I agree with Jonathan's post though, I think you need to show a correlation between the countries and policy.
ReplyDelete