Pollution and Farming

Pollution and Farming

The world is warming. You can run and you can hide, but the truth remains the same. This is a problem almost exclusively because of the exponentially large amounts of carbon monoxide that us humans continue to pump into the atmosphere. And after doing research for a different prompt, I found a pair of articles further enlightening me into the world of agricultural pollution.

The first article I read, "A huge amount of air pollution comes from farming, not just power plants", is honestly quite horrifying. It says that deaths from smog and soot in the air are responsible for 3.3 million deaths per year. This problem has to do with all of the ammonia, fertilizers, animal waste and burning of fossil fuels that occur on farms around the world. 

The second article I read was titled "Reply to 'No-till agriculture and climate change mitigation'", explains that no-till farming does little to reduce the effects of climate change. First off, I'll give a brief explanation of what no-till farming is. An example would be a farmer planting corn and after that corn has been harvested, the farmer neglects to plow the ground and remove the remaining stalks. Thus, not tilling the land. The argument is that if a farmer chose to practice no-till farming, then the amount of diesel saved after not going over the land another time would have a large impact on climate change. 

The world we live in is in desperate need of change. We demand more food to feed our growing population, but to grow that food, we destroy our planet. There is no simple fix. This is one of our generations monumental problems that we don't have much time to solve.