GEOG 1070 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Intensive Animal Farming, Genetically Modified Food, Ecological Footprint
23 Feb 2016
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Geog 1070: contemporary environment issues lecture 9. Green revolution brought about genetic engineering: high yielding crop varieties, results tradeoffs were irrigation, commercial inorganic fertilizers, pesticides led to unemployment. Genetically modified foods (gmos: gene manipulation: transferring a specific gene from one species to another unrelated species. Led to plants tolerant in insects, droughts, pesticides, heat, old, etc. Industrialized animal production led to minimal land requirements low-cost products: drawbacks were a large ecological footprint because of high inputs of grains, antibiotics, etc and air and water pollution. Large scale industrial animal agriculture facilities confined animals in densely populated pews, commercially fed food, and antibiotics to reduce disease spread: much cheaper than grazing and tree-range operations because required less land and manual labor. For increased animal production, hormone supplements produce faster growth used in us and canada but not europe. 40% of antibiotics in us used for livestock: less infection, more weight gain.
