...Speech 10/8/12 Loss of Farmland I. Introduction A. According to the American Farmland Trust between 2002 and 2007, 4,080,300 acres of farmland were lost and converted to development. To put that into perspective, that’s an area almost the size of Massachusetts. Currently our farmland loss is at an astonishing 1 acre + a minute. Now you might not think that this affects you, but you are wrong. B. I want you to think about things that you do every day. Well I know that one thing almost everyone does every day is eat. Eating is necessary to live, and about 99% of your food is probably coming from a farmer. According to Nelson at the American Farmland Trust farmland is necessary in society providing essential goods as well as open space, environmental protection that land markets fail to account for. C. We have been using farmland for things other than farming and it needs to stop, urban development is taking over the land which is so vital to our existence. D. Farmland is being lost way too fast. Urban development is one of the biggest reasons for this loss. We need to stop using our farmland for other things. II. Body A. The amount of land that is usable for farming is very small compared to the amount of land on the earth. Coming from the researchers at farmland.org and the American Farmland Trust is this analogy. (ppt) Consider the Earth as an apple. If it was sliced into 4 pieces, 3 of these would represent water...
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...Stanislaus County, located in California’s San Joaquin Valley, is home to one of the world's most productive farmland and agriculture industries. Urbanization or urban sprawl, the development of highly populated, car-dependent communities into lower density areas away from central urban areas, leads to many negative effects including obesity. Loss of farmland will lead to population growth, thus requiring a higher demand for food, but with the lack of necessary land, farmers will be unable to supply enough products. It is imperative to conserve farmland, reduce urbanization, reside in farm or industry-based communities and incorporate urban agriculture in those communities. The paradigm of Easter Island illustrates the negative effects of not having boundaries. Easter Island, present-day Rapa Nui, was once a sophisticated civilization populated by up to 30,000 people. Succeeding the deforestation of the entire island, a cascade of events led to the eventual reduction of resources and lowered the ability to provide for a higher population. It also led to soil erosion, which caused soil to runoff faster and led to a decrease in freshwater. The combined factors lowered the yield of crops...
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...subsidies. One of the problems that farmers face is the loss of farmland. Due to urban sprawl and rural non-farm development Canada is losing thousands acres of farmland annually. We need to protect our farmland because it’s the base for our agricultural economy. On top of that, our farmlands provide a healthy environment to our wildlife. The American farmland Trust, a nation-wide, not-for-profit agency is working on the preservation of farmland for many years now. They believe that there are four fundamentals to creating growth strategies that benefit farmers, urban dwellers and suburban residents. One, being communities must plan out a good framework that balances out all interest such as work and transportation. Two, being subsidies which support sprawl over top quality farmland must be eliminated. Three, being the support of private landowners must be enlisted to help create land conservation and smart growth strategies. All levels of government must support and commit themselves to the protection of preservation of farmland and open spaces. Canada has good farmland and to pave over it for communities is not right. To make an inch of good topsoil takes millions of years, so there is no way of getting our farmland once it’s lost to the urbanization sprawl. Another problem farmers face are the decline of the family farm and the growth of agribusinesses. Careless polices of the Federal government seem to be causing the loss of large numbers of family farms. This is due to government...
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...floods cause significant damage to farm land which has the potential to lead to serious agricultural consequences including loss of income, contamination of topsoil, crop loss and damage to harvests, as a result, causes great financial burden to farmers. Despite this, droughts also endure the potential to cause significant destruction of farmland including soil erosion, however, floods are recognised to have more of an immediate impact than droughts. The consistent rainfall and flooding across Queensland’s producing regions in 2011 has resulted in an array of damage to fruits and vegetables including tomatoes, celery, lettuce, watermelon and...
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...the population. As a result, this may lead to extensive resource exploitation practices such as on fertile soil for the production of food, which may negatively impact the environment and wildlife. On Easter Island, as people cleared forests and changed the landscape for farmland, native animal species became extinct. Dwindling amount of resources also led to food shortages and more resource exploitation. In today’s societies, signs of resource exploitation can be seen in energy production such as the exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves, which are not renewable resources. For example, USA consumed 20,071 thousands of barrels of oil per day in the year 2004. While USA is not a major producer of oil, it is a major consumer of oil for energy production. Population growth results in resource exploitation and stress on natural...
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...The country of Panama is roughly 18 million acres in size; deforestation cuts down approximately the area of Panama in trees and other plant life every year (United Nations FAO n.pag.). This ruination of the world’s greatest resource is startling. The globe is heavily dependent on the valuable raw materials produced from the forests, yet as supplies dwindle, humanity continues along this devastating path. The economic and human welfare boost and expansion of both farmland and living space that deforestation provides do not measure up to the loss of biogenetic diversity, the increase in global temperature, and the destruction of the water cycle. As deforestation overtakes many natural landscapes, the boom in small village economy and human...
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...materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Ivey Management Services, c/o Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 3K7; phone (519) 661-3208; fax (519) 661-3882; e-mail cases@ivey.uwo.ca. Copyright © 1996, Ivey Management Services and Samsung HRDC Version: (A) 2002-11-22 In October 1994, Her Tae-Hak, President of Samsung’s Joong-Ang Development Company was driving to his office, past the “Yongin Farmland” (Farmland), an amusement complex sprawling over 3,700 acres in the Yongin valley. Her was spearheading a major drive within the company to position the theme park as one of the world’s leading vacation resort towns. His master plan called for an investment of about US$300 million over the next five years, to be internally funded by the Samsung Group. Despite the booming Korean economy and the increasing demands for leisure attractions, the global competitive environment of the theme park industry raised several concerns. Should Samsung invest in such an aggressive expansion plan for Farmland? Was this an attractive industry for investment? Her was...
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...Flood as a social problem There are few places on Earth where people need not be concerned about flooding. With the onset of rainy season, we need to be prepared for possible flash floods, landslides, and related disasters especially in high risk and vulnerable areas, that is why in Philippines flood is a major problem. Many people die every year because of this natural disaster. Most floods take hours or even days to develop, giving residents ample time to prepare or evacuate, but not in Philippines floods develop in a shorter period. Others generate quickly and with little warning. These flash floods can be extremely dangerous, instantly turning a babbling brook into a thundering wall of water and sweeping everything in its path downstream. There are many causes of flood. Typhoons may cause flooding to coastal areas. When there is a typhoon, the atmospheric pressure is low. Sea level rises and affects the volume of water flowing from the river to the sea. This indirectly leads to flooding. Flooding always occur in coastal areas. Because whenever there are high tides or storms, the sea level will raise. If the sea level is higher than the level of the coastal lowland, flooding will occur. Heavy rainfall raises the water level. When the water level is higher than the river banks or the dams, the water comes out from the river, there will have flooding. But even small amount of rainfalls in our country may cause flood. This graph says that ten percent of the fatalities during...
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...when the Neolithic Revolution was ongoing. Though Paul Crutzen, noble prize winner in chemistry in 1995 and the person responsible for the rapid popularity of the word Anthropocene, stated that it was during the Industrial revolution when Anthropocene came to existence. Actually I think that the rapid agricultural development was the initial key factor for the present lack of sustainability. As the Anthropocene were contributing to the agricultural revolution to develop the socio-economic factors, the factors responsible for environmental safekeeping were being threatened by their imprudent actions. Professor William estimated the population of the world was almost 5,000,000. Because of the ever-increasing population and the need of farmland, the destruction of forestland began and thus the Anthropocene started manipulating the natural balance inadvertently as transmission of carbon-di-oxide increased radically. Besides, the cultivation of wet crops such as rice was the reason for uncontrolled methane emissions. Moreover, the ongoing...
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...With the rapid development of modern industry, the demand of energy is constantly ascending. It is urgent to explore new energies to meet the requirement. Coal seam gas which has widely been used in industry is considered as an new energy. Therefore, coal seam gas is playing a vital role in many countries. For instance, coal seam gas industry can provide outstanding economic revenue for Australia (Hamawand , Yusaf, & Hamawand, 2013, p. 552). However, the extraction of coal seam gas encounters opposition because it would bring serious contamination to farmland and environment . This essay will outline the merits of exploiting the coal seam gas which may replace the conventional energy and to reduce contamination. It will also discuss the negative effects of developing the coal seam gas industry on farming and the environment. Coal seam gas is the substaintial energy that can substitute the traditional energy and decrease environmental pollution. First of all, the refining of coal seam gas can lower the environmental pollution. For example, the new Kenya water treatment plant can help changing coal seam gas water to recycle, and thus could reduce the water pollution (GE; advanced technology to produce beneficial water from booming coal seam gas industry in Australia, 2011). Furthermore, the development of coal seam gas can decrease the air pollution. If the discharge of greenhouse gases were limited from burning fossil fuel, the extensive disposal of coal seam gas for coal...
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...Terrestrial Resource Challenges The increase of the human population and the actions by the human population are the common link between all resource challenges. Two terrestrial resource challenges are solid waste and agricultural farmland with the main causes for each resource varying considerably. While solid waste is produced individually at approximately one thousand and twenty-eight pounds per year, farm land experiences accelerated eroding of agricultural soils or deterioration in addition to losing precious farm acreage to new or existing development. Nearly all of the reasons for the issues being faced regarding the Earth’s resources and how to sustain them, points to human actions. The way these issues threaten sustainability is by human action. The ever growing global population is pushing the production of quality food past its ability to maintain doing so and with the rate of soil erosion about seven times greater than that of soil formation, it is near impossible to keep production high on such unfertile ground. Encroaching on farmland to build new developments in order to keep up with the populations need for housing is another major cause of unsustainability in agricultural lands. There is no room in a sustainability plan for loss of agricultural land. The land that is used for producing food for the United States citizens and others around the world is already in jeopardy due to such activities as over grazing. “We have to find ways to produce food to meet...
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...With the development of Australian society, more people move to the cities from the country because of work opportunities. It increases the economy in some aspects, but it also causes many problems such as reduction of valuable farmland near cities and increased urban pollution. Urban sprawl affects the environment by destroying native habitats and increasing urban pollution including air pollution from increased traffic and urban waste into waterways. There are many definitions of urban sprawl. The Heinemann Atlas states that urban sprawl means the spread of urban areas into rural areas such as farmland, forests and coastal lands that lie on the outer edges of cities. In other words, urban sprawl is described by development that increases the distance between the city center and its outer edge. (2003, HYPERLINK "http://www.hi.com.au/atlas/updates/bg.asp?subtopicid=3619" http://www.hi.com.au/atlas/updates/bg.asp?subtopicid=3619) It is estimated that 88% of the world’s population growth next century will be in urban areas. This phenomenon especially in Australia where more than 80% of the people live in cities and coastal areas. Australia’s cities however will continue to grow and the numbers of people both live and work will increase. A number of Australian cities have the problems that associated with urban sprawl. Indeed, some of Australia’s cities are considered the world’s worst in terms of their sprawling nature. For example, Perth’s metropolitan area currently...
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...motorization are currently critical issues, because together they cause environmental problems as well as ecological and social issues which pose a threat to human health and social stability. Urban sprawl also called urban development, as expansion from the centre to outskirt, more cars are used, and then, leads to more vehicles exhaust emissions which are the main factor of climate change. More car use results in motorization, a lack of communications with friends and family results in social fragmentation. The Global Climate Coalition (GCC), the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and environmentalists suggest answers to these problems. This essay argues that some solutions work more effectively to these focusing on climate change, loss of land and negative impacts on public health. Climate change forms a serious threat to the environment, urban sprawl has resulted in serious emission of greenhouse gases as more cars are used which requires more energy use. Then, more and more global warming gases are released which leads to critical environmental problems. Martin (2007) points out car and land use lead to more greenhouse emissions. And cars and facilities are the main producers of global warming. Thereby, Environmental problems are having become acute in the twenty-first century. Gonzalez (2005) also indicates that expansion the city results in more emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, and more energy use which is also a main factor leading to...
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...This document of GLG 220 Week 3 Discussion Questions shows the Solutions to the following problems: DQ 1: Answer in 200-300 word count. Choose one question below and title your answer with Reply. 1. Describe the hydrologic cycle. How does this cycle affect the earth? 2. What is the potential danger due to mass wasting in your state or region? What is the effort spent to minimize the impact of mass wasting? 3. What is the impact of soil erosion on farmland? What are the tools that could be utilized to minimize the loss of farmland to soil erosion? DQ 2: Answer in 200-300 word count. Choose one question below and title your answer with Reply. 256 1. Based on your reading, do you believe that we are in a period of glacial or interglacial stage? Why or why not? What are the current factors that might cause the acceleration of one stage over the other? 2. One philosophy about pollution of water is that water can always be cleaned (e.g. by the use of distillation). Is this a viable solution? Why or why not? 3. What are the different sources of water in the United States? Which source of water is mostly used in your region? How could we protect the sources of our water from drying up and contamination? General Questions - General General Questions Resource: Ch. 9 of Geoscience Laboratory Complete University of Phoenix Material: Week Two Earthquakes Lab Report and University of Phoenix Material: Week Two Lab Report Worksheet by answering the following questions in Ch...
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...rose from seventy-nine buildings in April 1847 to about one hundred thousand buildings by December of 1849 (“The California Gold Rush”, 2003). As California was not yet a part of the United States this significant increase in population could have only helped to insure California be included into the United States and allow the United States expand its borders. Gold was just one of many reasons for some people to migrate out west, fertile farmland was another. People are always looking for a chance to have a better life and this is no different from those farmers who migrated into the western plains. Farmers began to clear the land and the wheat that they had planted began to rise in value so much that even more land was cleared and more farming was done. That is until in 1931 when after the land had been overly farmed, a massive drought occurred (“The Dust Bowl,” n.d.). Because of the drought the crops began to wither and die and the soil began to erode. This loss in money from selling the crops, and from the loss in food, brought on a famine for the farmers and their families. Conditions in the Midwest declined with the continuation of the drought and the beginning of the dust storms of 1932 (Fanslow, 1998). Having lost all their crops, and their...
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