How is Factory Farming killing the Environment

What is row cropping and how is it killing our environment? Well let's take a look.


Row cropping is used by big industry farms that have "kicked out" smaller family owned farms. These farms are known as factor farms. They do not practice sustainable farming and do not have a crop rotation. Factor farms have changed the landscape from rolling prairies, big forests, prairie potholes, and small duck ponds but now it is just rows of crops in a way that is bad for the soil and the water.





Factory farms are using fertilizer to try and keep their crops alive and get them the right nutrients. The fertilizer they used is mostly consisted of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. This farming is bad for the soil because when you plant the same crop every year without a crop rotation, the nutrients that crop needs aren't in the soil. So in order for them to keep planting the same crop they are constantly using fertilizer to try and grow their crops. Even with the consistent fertilizing the nutrients aren't staying in the soil but instead it's becoming apart of the watershed and causing major problems with the local water in lakes and rivers.





This watershed from farmland is creating "Dead Zones" and toxic algal blooms. This watershed is finding its way into the lakes and rivers. The tributary rivers from Montana to New York which fed into the Mississippi river are high in nitrogen and phosphorous.

Shannon1

There is three times as much nitrogen as there was in 1950 in the Mississippi river and phosphorous has doubled. This means there is more phytoplankton, more sinking cells, and lower oxygen levels. Once the oxygen levels get around or below 2 the fish start to leave or die.

This gif from a climate.gov website shows what the oxygen levels could be if we don't change how we farm.





What can we do to help solve the problem? Well we can start be having an annual crop rotation to keep healthy nutrient levels in the soil. Another solution would be to plant a few rows of trees, shrubs and a grass strip. This will make a riparian buffer which will reduce sediment erosion and to help prevent fertilizer from getting into the rivers.

Works Cited

Rabalais, Nancy. "The Dead Zones." Nov. 2017. Ted.com, uploaded by Nancy
     Rabalais, Nov. 2017, www.ted.com/talks/
     nancy_rabalais_the_dead_zone_of_the_gulf_of_mexico#t-525069. Accessed 19
     Nov. 2019. Speech.

Shannon1. "Detailed map of Mississippi River tributary structure." 2019.
     American Rivers, www.americanrivers.org/river/mississippi-river/.
     Accessed 25 Nov. 2019.

Lindsey, Rebecca. "Wet spring linked to forecast for big Gulf of Mexico 'dead
     zone' this summer." Climate.gov, www.climate.gov/news-features/features/
     wet-spring-linked-forecast-big-gulf-mexico-%E2%80%98dead-zone%E2%80%99-summer.
     Accessed 25 Nov. 2019.

United States, Congress, Senate. Harmful Algal Bloom Research and Hypoxia
     Research and Control Act of 1998. Congress.gov, www.congress.gov/bill/
     105th-congress/senate-bill/1480. Accessed 25 Nov. 2019. 105th Congress,
     Senate Bill s.1480, agreed to by Senate 30 Sept. 1988.

Hypoxia Task Force, Environmental Protection Agency. (2015). Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force 2015 Report to Congress. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/htf_report_to_congress_final_-_10.1.15.pdf (Accessed June 17, 2019)

What are some bad logging practices and

how can we fix them?

In the article What you can do to help prevent climate change, according to experts? they talk about "Solutions to halt the ongoing damage are already available, such as using renewable energy, restoring ecosystems, doing regenerative farming..." These are some solutions to bad logging and farming practices which are unsustainable and unsuitable for a healthy relationship with an ecosystem. 

These logging practices lead to deforestation, and in extreme cases inhabitable land. A good example of unsustainable logging and farming and the aftermath of it would be the great dust bowl of 1930 which lasted a decade and made the land inhabitable and not suitable for farming. They can also lead to dangerous interactions with wildlife. For example the deforestation in India has driven the Indian leopard into towns to find food. This is a dangerous situation and is driving the Indian leopard and other species to the point of being endangered or even worse extinct.

What can we do to prevent these things from happening? Well sustainable forestry will allow loggers to harvest trees without wiping out the forest. This allows loggers to harvest small acre amounts and instead of cutting down all the trees they only harvest the bigger and older trees leaving the smaller to mid sized trees to grow. When you are farming crops on a large scale it is best to do a crop rotation annually or every two years. This is because different crops need different nutrients and a crop rotation allows the nutrients a chance to replenish and keeps the soil healthier. Having a crop rotation also reduces the risk of diseased crops. So you will get a better crop yield when you have a crop rotation. This keeps a healthy environment for farming and forestry.