Got Food? - the Scientia Review

Major crops grown in the United States include corn, soybeans, hay, wheat, cotton, rain, and rice.
The U.S. is the world‘s largest producer of corn. Corn is a versatile crop that is mostly used to feed
livestock. It is also consumed by people or used to create environmentally friendly ethanol fuels for use in
cars and trucks with a lower carbon footprint. Hay and grain are mainly used for animal consumption
(EPA, 2009).
On a global scale, food production is not being distributed evenly to meet the needs of a growing
population. Economically stable nations suffer from food over consumption that leads to obesity while
developing countries are plagued with starvation and a dwindling food supply. Increased production is
limited by three major factors: land, water, and energy. An increasing global population means a decrease
in the amount of land area per person available for growing food (Leaver, 2011). The availability of water
is essential to growing food as irrigated crops account for 50% of the global food (Boutraa, 2010). A
large amount of nonrenewable energy is used to make fertilizer for agriculture as well as to transport
crops from the producer to the consumer. The main effect of globalization is that it is the driving force
behind the sustainable agriculture movement. By considering the needs of people as a whole and the
resources available to them, some kind of plan can be made to utilize the resources to their full potential
and ensure maximum output for as long as possible.
Rotating crops seasonally is a good way to avoid overfarming
a plot of land to the point that it becomes unusable.
Environmental Impact of Current Agriculture
The environmental impacts of agriculture can be divided into two groups: those caused by
expansion and those caused by amplification. Expansion refers to the scenario in which croplands and
pastures extend into new areas and replace natural ecosystems, and amplification denotes the process by
which existing crops are managed for higher production through the use of irrigation, fertilizers, and
mechanization.
The availability of land area to produce food has not increased substantially over the past 50
years. Meanwhile, the rising global population has decreased the agricultural land area available per
person to grow food from 1.30 to 0.72 hectares in the last 40 years. These trends will most likely stay the
same in future years because land will be used for other uses such as urbanization, biofuel production,
desertification, and salination. Global agriculture has cleared 70% of the grassland, 50% of the savanna,
45% of the temperate deciduous forest, and 27% of the tropical forest biome. Croplands and pastures
currently represent almost 40% of the non-ice land on Earth, and much of the expansion has been isolated
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