Landuse:
Advances in technology have allowed for automation to play a major role in agricultural processes. With increases in the speed and efficiency of transportation as well as population growth, agricultural processes could be carried out over longer distances, allowing farmers to produce crops over larger areas of land. However, this has resulted in heavy over-expansion. As of December 2005, an estimated 40% of Earth's land is being used for growing crops or grazing cattle, compared to just 7% in 1700. The main issue is sustainability, as expansion of agricultural land continues, as areas of the Amazon Rainforest are being felled to grow soybeans. The impact agricultural expansion is having on the Brazilian Amazon can be seen in Figure 4. Dr. Navin Ramankutty, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison says that "Except for Latin America and Africa, all the places in the world where we could grow crops are already being cultivated. The remaining places are either too cold or too dry to grow crops". The level of land being used for agriculture and the areas where food cannot be grown can be seen in Figure 5.
Figure 4 is a pie graph effectively illustrating the causes of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. The main cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest is not logging, but in fact cattle ranching and other agricultural practices. In fact, logging only makes up 3% of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Clearly, agricultural expansion is not just an issue of running out of space.
Figure 4 is a pie graph effectively illustrating the causes of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. The main cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest is not logging, but in fact cattle ranching and other agricultural practices. In fact, logging only makes up 3% of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Clearly, agricultural expansion is not just an issue of running out of space.
Figure 4: Pie chart of main causes of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest
Source: Lind, D. (2010, May 6). Impacts and Causes of Deforestation in the Amazon Basin. Retrieved from http://kanat.jsc.vsc.edu/
Figure 5 contrasts the amount of land being used for growing crops and the amount of land being used as pasture. As can be seen, most areas, with the exception of India, the United States and Europe are used for pasture. This is especially true in Australia, Africa and the Middle East, where hardly any pasture is grown. This is most likely due to the lack of nutrients present in the soil. Comparing this map with excess nitrogen in soil (Figure 8), a direct correlation between excess nitrogen and croplands can be drawn, providing further evidence that the issue of fertilizer use is a legitimate concern. This map also highlights the extent of production inefficiencies issue. However, most apparent is the extremely large areas of the Earth's land that is being used for agricultural practices. Major deserts remain empty of agriculture, and notice how there appears to be a line that stretches across the map from the top of the U.S. to past the top of China. The land above this line is too cold to grow agriculture, making apparent the lack of available land for agricultural expansion.