The Environmental Impact of Agribusiness

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The Environmental Impact of Agribusiness

• Learning Objective To know and understand the
  main impacts Agribusiness has on the environment

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1940s 1973 1980s 1992 1993
1997
WWII
CAP EU Common Market
Food Mountains
Set aside quotas
Ban Straw burning
Hedgerow Regulation
Hedgerow destructions
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Hedgerows or Habitat corridors Erosion Runoff Eco
systems Other methods include Burning
straw Draining wetland Destroying woodland
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Erosion

• Soil
• Leaves and branches of hedges break the fall of
  rain
• Roots bind soil together
• Soil gets washed away or

• Wind
• soil gets blow away
• Hedges act as a wind breaker

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Runoff Chemical pollution

• Fertilizer is sprayed
• Rain carries it to water
• Over nutrients in water kill fish
• But, encourages algae
• Slurry acts in the same way

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Pesticides

• Sprayed on crops, rain causes run off
• Direct poisoning
• Risks to human health
• Resistant increases in human so often more
  pesticides are used

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Ecosystems

• Loss of plants of 300 plants recorded in
  hedgerows, many have now vanished
• Loss of animals homes, food chains, extinction.

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Other issues

• Burning straw
• Releases carbon dioxide into the air pollution
• Reduces nutrients being put back into soil
• Banned in 1993

• Draining wetlands
• Ecosystem impacts, loss of species both plants
  and animals
• Chopping woodlands
• Impacts ecosystems
• Erosion

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Tasks

• Read pages 126-127 Orange book and 150-151 blue
  book
• Brief notes (one paragraph) on the history of
  agribusiness, think of the timeline slide.
• Write a short account for the impacts
  agribusiness has on the environment by
  considering the below sub headings
• Pesticides
• Fertilizers
• Ecosystems
• Erosion soil and wind
• Straw burning, draining wetlands and woodland
  destruction
• 4. Complete disadvantages and advantages to
  agribusiness from page 126, orange book