Conflict between Conservation and Agriculture

The conflict between Agriculture and Conservation of our natural world stems from a
simple problem, our need for food. With the population of the world increasing at an
exponential rate, the area needed to produce food for this population also increases. It is
our most basic and fundamental need and therefore people cannot question our need to
produce it. This means that the production of food comes above any forms of conservation,
and also begs the question why the need for conservation.
Agriculture has had a massive impact in on our world. Natural ecosystems take
hundreds of years to develop and become complex communities with a high number of
individual species, leading to high biodiversity. The ecosystem and the species that exist
within the Agricultural fields are very different.
Through use of Pesticides, Genetic Engineering and Selective Breeding it is possible to create
monocultures within these fields. While this is good for food production, as a result of
decreased competition. It will increase the competition of plants outside of the fields as
there is now less space to grow, as well as killing all the plants that were previously located
on the fields.
However it is not only plants that suffer because of these monocultures. Insects get killed by
the pesticides put on the plants and there becomes less food in the food chain meaning it
cant support as large of a population and also increases the competition for this food.
The overall result of these monocultures is a drastic fall in the biodiversity not just within
the fields but in the surrounding area as well, as more and more animals and plants are
unable to compete are become extinct in that area.
Genetic Engineering and Selective breeding can also have another impact this time on
genetic diversity. Because farmers selectively breed and genetically engineer the plants the
alleles they want the gene pool becomes extremely small. This makes the crops extremely
susceptible to small changes in the environment. This is dangerous because it means if the
temperature or sea level rose by a relatively small amount it could have disastrous impacts
and could wipe out all the crops in a particular area.
It does not just have an impact on diversity though. Agriculture is the primary reason
for deforestation as a large area needs to be cleared of tress before any plants can be grown
on the land. This has many problems, as mentioned earlier it reduces bio diversity. However
it can also have big impacts on the environment, causing ozone depletion, global warming
and increased CO emissions
In conclusion the reason Conservation is often considered less important than Agriculture is
because there is no financial reason to support Conservation and that our need for food is
more important than the idea of Conservation. However as shown by this essay unless
something is done about the conservation of our natural world then vast problems will
surely follow.