Contemporary Debates in Food and Farming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Contemporary Debates in Food and Farming - Essay Example gases and climate change: whereas growing population and globalization stimulate industrial and economic growth, the side effects of it are disturbing in terms of greenhouse gases emission and hence climate change. According to Rust & Rust (2013, p. 255), â€Å"climate change and its effects on existence on earth are becoming more and more relevant as physical evidence of change in our climate is beginning to mount†. Among numerous economic areas affecting condition of the atmosphere, agricultural sector is one of rather influential factors. Agriculture is the sector aimed at production of food products and raw materials for other industry branches and employing about 1 billion people all over the world. As far as this sector is crucial for economic well-being, it is present almost in all countries of the world. Thus, due to economic reasons, environmental effect of agriculture is literally unavoidable for each of the countries with agricultural sector. The map presented in the Figure 1 illustrates that almost all the countries are engaged in agricultural activity to certain extent. With the population growing rapidly, scientists of agricultural sector, demand for products of agricultural sector and particularly of animal origin is increasing worldwide (Webb & Erasmus, 2013, p. 413). Considering growing demand, specialists do their best deploying their scientific knowledge and developed technological means in order to intensify production of food. However, economic growth is connected to volumes of CO2 emissions produced by different industrial and agricultural enterprises. In the recent fifty years, amounts of greenhouse gas emissions in the sectors of forestry, fishery, crops cultivation and other agricultural segments have increased twice and are likely to keep increasing at a fast pace in future. As it is shown in the Figure 2, agricultural sector in the United States accounts for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions (EPA, 2014). On the global scale, agricultural