Industrialized farming

Agriculture has changed drastically over the last 50 years. Even though industrialized farming has resulted in cheap and plentiful food, it has caused many negative health problems. Some of these negative health aspects are:

• Animals are fed hormones and antibiotics to promote faster growth, but these medicines are affecting the people that eat the meat.
• The excessive waste created by the large concentrations of animals is handled in ways that can pollute air and water. For example, the manure is normally sprayed on crops but it often runs off into surface waters.
• Factory farms pollute communities and affect public health which increases medical costs for those living near these farms.
• Farms have started to use technologies such as pesticides and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers which could end up polluting groundwater.
• Scientists have created strains of crops, these strains are known as high-yielding varieties or miracle seeds. These seeds have an increased nitrogen absorbing potential compared to other varieties. These strains have lost nutrients as they were developed so they are not as good for the consumers.

I think it could be possible to reverse these trends but it would be a very slow moving process. We could reverse this by putting an end to the factory farming system by buying our food from smaller, sustainable farms. These smaller farms work for social and environmental gain so they wouldn't sacrifice the health of the land or the quality of food to make an increased amount of money like the industrialized farms would.