Agricultural Impact on Environment

Environment and agriculture have always been closely inter-twined, and every agricultural activity has its particular impact on the environment. Only the negative impacts are discussed here. They are linked closely with stage of agricultural development and intensity of agricultural activity. From the prehistoric era, when humans survived by hunting and collecting food, our species has intervened in natural food chains. When human communities became settled and started domesticating animals and plants, their impact on the environment assumed new proportions. Since that era human agricultural activity has continued to intensify, and over the last 150 years the rate of intensification has accelerated dramatically. At the same time the negative environmental impact of agricultural practices has become steadily clearer. This process of agricultural intensification was, and still is, driven by growing demands on the finite amount of arable land available