AG704 Agriculture, Environment and Sustainability Convenor: Dr. John A Finn Dr. Julian Park

1
AG704 Agriculture, Environment and
SustainabilityConvenor Dr. John A
Finn Dr. Julian Park
2
Objectives

• Introduce the module
• Introduce website
• Provide a historical perspective that outlines
  why sustainability has become an issue
• Discuss Sustainability as a concept

3
AG704 Agriculture, Environment and Sustainability

• What issues/questions do you expect to encounter
  in this module?

4
Specific examples of issues

• Soil erosion and land degradation
• Genetically modified crops
• Pollution
• Climate change and consequences
• Irrigation
• Agrochemical usage
• Profitability of farming
• Precautionary principle
• Renewable energy, polluter-pays principle
• Rate of consumption of non-renewables

5
Examples of the BIG issues

• Population growth
• Food production to match population growth
• Resource consumption
• per capita and total rates of consumption,
  renewal
• Limits on science and technology
• Limits on the environment

6
In a nutshell

• The current human presence and scale of activity
  on Earth is truly unique
• never before in Earth's history have there
  existed so many people, each using so many
  resources and involving such a degree of
  manipulation of Earth's ecosystems.

7
Perspectives from history

• Development of human population size
• Development of agriculture as an (extremely
  effective ) agent of environmental change
• What are the consequences of these developments?

8
A (very) brief history of Agriculture

• Until about 12000 years ago- hunter-gatherer
  2-20m
• Domestication of crops
• Human settlement, civilisation
• 1800 Global agricultural evolution (1 billion)
• nutritious and productive foods from foreign
  countries (maize, potato etc), modern rotations,
  science applied to agriculture,
• 1950 Green Revolution (2.5 billion)
• plant breeding and genetics, fertilisers,
  pesticides
• 2000 ?????????????? (6 billion)
• 2050 (8-10 billion)

9
Agriculture and environmental change

• Agricultural ecosystems have caused four species
  (barley, maize, rice and wheat) to occupy about
  40 of global cropland as monocultures
• simplification and homogenisation of worlds
  ecosystems
• What will be the impacts of a further doubling in
  food production?
• (Tilman, 1999 )

10
Consequences of these developments

• Unprecedented rate and scale of resource
  consumption e.g. energy (O/H)
• Conversion of natural ecosystems
• Environmental degradation at local and global
  scales
• Short-term gains with ignorance of long-term
  consequences
• Food production to match population?
• See ltwww.pnas.orggt volume 96

11
In a nutshell

• The current human presence and scale of activity
  on Earth is truly unique
• never before in Earth's history have there
  existed so many people, each using so many
  resources and involving such a degree of
  manipulation of Earth's ecosystems.

12
Sustainability- Brundtland definition

• Sustainable development meets the needs of the
  present generation without compromising the
  ability of future generations to meet their own
  needs. (Brundtland 1987)
• Needs and Limitations
• For an introductory discussion of the
  concept/definition of sustainability Spedding,
  C.R.W., 1996, Agriculture and the citizen.

13
Fig. 1. Based on FAO data, world food production,
measured as the sum of cereals, coarse grains and
root crops, almost doubled from 1961 to 1996. A
linear regression, and 95 and 99 confidence
intervals for the regression, are shown.