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In the United States and Europe especially, large-scale agriculture has grown and small-scale-agriculture has shrunk due to financial arrangements such as contract farming. Bigger farms tend to favour monocultures, overuse water resources, and accelerate deforestation and soil quality decline.
Increased erosion in agricultural landscapes from anthropogenic factors can occur with losses of up to 22% of soil carbon in 50 years. [99] Climate change will also cause soils to warm. In turn, this could cause the soil microbe population size to dramatically increase 40–150%. Warmer conditions would favour growth of certain bacteria species ...
Despite this, all agricultural practices have been found to have a variety of effects on the environment to some extent. Animal agriculture, in particular meat production, can cause pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, disease, and significant consumption of land, food, and water.
[58] [59] Causes for the decline in insect population are similar to those driving other biodiversity loss. They include habitat destruction , such as intensive agriculture , the use of pesticides (particularly insecticides ), introduced species , and – to a lesser degree and only for some regions – the effects of climate change . [ 60 ]
Agriculture contributes greatly to soil erosion and sediment deposition through intensive management or inefficient land cover. [31] It is estimated that agricultural land degradation is leading to an irreversible decline in fertility on about 6 million ha of fertile land each year. [32]
The direct cause of most deforestation is agriculture by far. [9] More than 80% of deforestation was attributed to agriculture in 2018. [10] Forests are being converted to plantations for coffee, palm oil, rubber and various other popular products. [11] Livestock grazing also drives deforestation.
Traditional rice cultivation is the second biggest agricultural methane source after livestock, with a near-term warming impact equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from all aviation. [73] Government involvement in agricultural policy is limited due to the high demand for agricultural products like corn, wheat, and milk. [74]
This global decline is dominated by negative impacts in already warm countries, since agriculture in cooler countries is expected to benefit from warming. [27] However, this does not include the impact of changes in water availability, which can be far more important than the warming, whether for pasture species like alfalfa and tall fescue ...