E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm
Zimdahl Six Chemicals That Changed Agriculture
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-12-800617-7
Verlag: William Andrew Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm
ISBN: 978-0-12-800617-7
Verlag: William Andrew Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Six Chemicals That Changed Agriculture is a scientific look at how the chemicals used in today's food production were developed, evaluated, and came to be in wide-spread use. From fertilizers to pest management, antibiotics to DNA, chemicals have transformed the way our food is grown, protected, and processed.
Agriculture is the world's most important environment interaction, the essential human activity, and an increasingly controversial activity because of its use and presumed misuse of chemistry. The major characteristics of US agriculture for at least the last six decades have been rising productivity, declining number of mid-size farms, increasing farm size, an increasing percentage of farm production on fewer, large farms, increasing dependence of chemical technology and more developmental research being done by the agricultural chemical industry rather than by independent land-grant universities. Another equally important feature of modern agriculture is wide-spread suspicion of its technology by the public. The book will recount examples of this suspicion related to specific chemicals and present the essence of the suspicion and its results.
- Offers an historical analysis of the discovery and development some aspects of the chemistry of modern agriculture
- Addresses the advantages, disadvantages, desirable and undesirable results of the use of each of the chosen chemicals and compares and contrasts the real and frequently assumed problems of their use
- Provides valuable insights into the history and application of these focused chemicals, enabling readers to apply the lessons to new agricultural chemical developments
Zielgruppe
<p>Researchers and students in agro-chemical engineering, crop development, agriculture science, food toxicology, food safety</p>
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
- Introduction
- Modern agricultural characteristics enabled by chemicals
- The chemicals (molecules)
- A summary
Chapter 2 The Characteristics of Modern Agriculture Enabled by Chemicals
Abstract
The evolution of agriculture in the world's rich, developed countries has four defining eras: settled agriculture; blood, sweat and tears; mechanical; and chemical. Agriculture is now rapidly moving into the emerging era of genetic modification/biotechnology. Unfortunately, and disappointing to all agricultural practitioners, including scientists, small- and large-sized farmers, ranchers, commercial suppliers of resources, and developers of agricultural technology is the fact that many of the world's people remain under- or malnourished. A factual, descriptive account of a bit of what has happened in the chemical realm to create the present US agricultural system concludes the chapter. Keywords
Agricultural development; Chemical; Eras; Farms; Fertilizer; Hobbes; Mechanical; Pesticides; Results Chapter Outline Agricultural Development 23 Agriculture’s Eras 24 Settled Agriculture 24 Blood, Sweat, and Tears Era 24 The Mechanical Era 26 The Chemical Era 28 Inorganic Chemicals 30 Organic Chemicals 33 Results and the New Era 35 References 38 Agricultural Development
In the world’s rich, developed countries, agriculture has evolved through three defining eras and is now rapidly moving into the emerging era of genetic modification/biotechnology. Unfortunately, and disappointing to all agricultural practitioners including scientists, small- and large-sized farmers, ranchers, commercial suppliers of resources, and developers of agricultural technology is the fact that many of the world’s people remain under- or malnourished. The challenge continues in spite of the equally startling fact that enough food is produced by the world’s farmers and ranchers to feed everyone. Agriculture’s practitioners produce 17% more calories/person today than 30 years ago, despite a 70% population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2720 kilocalories (kcal)/person/day,1 which is above a minimally adequate diet of 2400 kcal/day.2 One must ask, why don’t all have adequate food? The threefold answer is (1) many people do not have sufficient land to grow or (2) income to purchase food that (3) may or may not be available. The answer is further complicated by the fact that there is no right to food. No one has a firm, mutually agreed upon moral obligation to feed anyone. Sadly, others may control its availability to the poor who, it seems, will always be among us. Agriculture’s Eras
Settled Agriculture
In Kolbert’s (2014) view, agriculture was invented, several times, in different parts of the world. The invention, development, or creation of settled agriculture was almost certainly by women, who, among their tasks, collected edible seeds and began to plant them. The first time may have been in Southern Turkey and parts of central Europe 10,000 to 7000 years ago, when wheat, or its genetic ancestors, was planted rather than gathered. People began to abandon hunting and gathering because they learned they could grow some of what they needed where they were; moving was not required. Over several millennia, settled agriculture began with maize in Mexico, Panama, and Colombia, and rice in China’s Yangtze Valley. The discovery that grain could be grown was one of the most significant events in human history and, in Diamond’s (1987) view, the worst mistake ever made. The advantage was “an efficient way to get more food for less work.” Settled agriculture gradually released people from the necessity of producing or finding food. It gave us the time to accomplish many things—indeed, to flourish. Without it, life for most people would have remained “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes, 1651). Without it, we would not have Shakespeare’s plays, Mozart’s symphonies, been to the Moon, or have achieved all the other marvelous things that we enjoy. But, it, Diamond (1987) claims, permitted population growth with its significant negative consequences that dominate our future and created agriculture’s production challenge. Blood, Sweat, and Tears Era
Other than permitting settlements and activities independent of food production, settled agriculture led to the blood, sweat, and tears era, in which famine and fatigue were common, inadequate food supplies were frequent and agriculture was inefficient, hard work. Most people were farmers and many farms were small and operated at a subsistence level. Life, as described by the British philosopher Hobbes (1651) was, for most people: wherein men live without other security, than their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them….In such conditions there is… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. The world’s population has not always grown as rapidly as it has in the past several decades (Figure 2.1). Even though for many centuries there was very little if any population growth; however, Hobbes’ dismal view still characterizes the lives of too many people. On October 29, 2014, the world’s population was 7.271 billion, growing at about 1.1%/year (significantly lower than the 1.2–1.3% rate of the previous decade), which presently yields the fact that today the world’s farmers and the food system must feed more than 200,000 people than were here yesterday. Growth rate in many African and Middle Eastern countries still exceeds 2%/year.
Figure 2.1 World population growth—1050–2050. About half of the world’s people live on less than US $2/day. In 2013, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that nearly 870 million of the world’s 7.1 billion people, 12%, were hungry. Ninety-eight percent of these people live in underdeveloped (developing is a synonym) countries. Thus, agriculture’s practitioners face the continuing production/distribution challenge in the knowledge of the dismal reality that almost one in eight of the people on this earth do not have enough to eat. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, formerly United Nations International Children’s Fund), 1.5 million people die each year of hunger, including 16,000 children. They “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.3” These are truly dismal statistics about our fellow human beings. It is these people, in so many places, who still live with, indeed endure, the blood, sweat, and tears era of agriculture. The Mechanical Era
The mechanical era of agriculture began with invention of labor-saving machines. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the first workable cotton gin. Thomas Jefferson made the first moldboard plow in 1794, the cast iron plow was patented in 1797, the first moldboard plow with interchangeable parts (primarily the moldboard) was patented in 1819, and in 1837, John Deere perfected and began to manufacture steel moldboard plows. The new plows didn’t just dig and disturb soil, they turned it over, permitted cultivation of harder soil, and permitted agricultural expansion in two ways. They enabled plowing soil and growing crops on land that previously could not be farmed. It was the first machine that allowed one farmer to farm more land. In 1824, when he was 15, Cyrus McCormick (1809–1884) invented a lightweight cradle for harvesting grain. His father, Robert, saw the potential of a mechanical reaper and worked on a horse-drawn reaper to harvest grain. He was never able to produce a reliable machine. He applied for a patent to claim it as his own invention. By 1831, Cyrus had improved the mechanical reaper. He received a US patent in 1834, founded the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which became part of the International Harvester Company in 1902, and began to manufacture the revolutionary machines in 1847. Renewal of his patent in 1848 was denied because Obed Hussey, an American inventor from Maine (1790–1860), had patented a reaper in 1833. Both made and patented several modifications to the reaper. Hussey sold his rights to McCormick in 1858. The horse-drawn reaper really began mechanized farming. It replaced manual cutting of wheat with scythes, sickles, and cradles with a machine that cut wheat and other small grains more quickly and efficiently and thus permitted one farmer to farm more land. McCormick’s reaper cut the grain but did not separate grain from chaff (straw and grain husk). In 1915, International Harvester began to sell the first “combine,” a new machine that harvested and threshed wheat in the field. The plow made agriculture possible in the central plains of North America and in northern Europe. It and the reaper and combine were essential to the creation of modern agriculture. They were part of the industrial revolution, a series of events that freed men from direct dependence on their own and...
