• soils are being degraded all around the world

• the amount of food that can be grown is in decline

• it is estimated that about 2 billion hectares of land have been affected

• SOIL DEGRADATION occurs because human activities impact the soil's ability to support plants and animals

• the activities include: clearing forests to make way for farms or towns, increasing the numbers and density of farm animals, poor irrigation practices and OVERFARMING

Salinity

• soil degradation often takes the form of salinity

• salinity is a problem when the soil has too much salt

How is this affected by food production?

• Agriculture alters the natural cycling of nutrients in soil

• Around the world 5 million hectares of forest are converted for agricultural use every year (two thirds of Tasmania).

• America and Australia have largely converted to farmland in the recent years with most of the forests disappearing.

• 50 million hectors of forest and woodland have been cleared for farmland since the European settlement began.

Changes to grasslands

• destroys local grasses in exchange for things like wheat, rice and corn crops

• Source 3 shows a field in the USA being made into a wheat farms

How is this affected by food production?

• Vegetation gets affected due to the need to cut down forests and to flatten out environments

• They destroy environments for a cheaper cost to supply

Examples

A example of this is the Amazon rain forest. It gets cut down for things like palm oil since its cheap to produce.

• the water used by farming can go into streams leading to clogs and destroys the aquatic wildlife along with pesticides

Changing natural water flows

• dammed rivers to create reservoirs to do irrigation for crops.

• makes rivers reduce the volume of water meaning less wildlife.

How is this affected by food production?

• pesticides used to grow crops have been pushed down rivers and lakes killing the wildlife inside them.

• This also kills the plant life in and near the rivers.

• adding dams blocking off water to rivers to gain water for irrigation causes the rivers to dry up or almost dry up making the animals have to go somewhere else and sometimes they can't.

Example

Laguna Bay which is one of the most polluted water bodies in the world (caused by things like pesticides)