Chapter 18. Chapter 18: Agriculture

Interactive Study Guide
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Guiding Question 18.1

What modern industrial agriculture methods are used to produce food, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches?

Why You Should Care

It is difficult nowadays to appreciate the importance of agriculture to human society because few of us need to be involved in the growing of our food. But the invention of agriculture is thought to have allowed humans to give up nomadic hunting and gathering, develop stable communities, and have larger populations. But the other side of the coin is that with larger populations come the problems of famine, epidemics, and war. By the 20th century, the yields provided by current agricultural practices had become insufficient to meet the demand of Earth’s population, and so more industrial and automated methods were developed.

These methods include planting monocultures—single crops all of the same variety planted over large areas so that it is more efficient to raise and harvest them. Modern chemistry has also helped; synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides were developed to provide crops with the optimal amount of nutrients while killing any other organism that might compete with them. High-yield varieties of crops were developed to take advantage of these breakthroughs. Today’s corn yields are nearly 100 times what they were a century ago because of these methods. The Green Revolution allowed the population to continue to grow. No one would want large-scale famines such as those that have occurred in countries such as China to return, but the question remains: Has the population growth allowed by modern intensive agriculture simply set humans up for an even more catastrophic crash than was originally avoided?

Test Your Vocabulary

Choose the correct term for each of the following definitions:

Term Definition
Nutrient enrichment of an aquatic ecosystem that stimulates excess plant growth and disrupts normal energy uptake and matter cycles.
Farming methods that do not deplete resources, such as soil and water, faster than they are replaced.
Plant-breeding program in the mid-1900s that dramatically increased crop yields and led the way for mechanized, large-scale agriculture.
The distance a food travels from its site of production to the consumer.
Farming method in which one variety of one crop is planted, typically in rows over huge swaths of land, with large inputs of fertilizer, pesticides, and water.
Farming that does not use synthetic fertilizer, pesticides, or other chemical additives.
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Infographic 18.1

1.

Using fertilizers can improve crop yields but can also create problems, such as:

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B.
C.
D.
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A hint about reading biology: It is often helpful to learn common combining forms (e.g., suffixes) of words to help you decipher meanings. Many times, if you can determine from context what one word means, you will have an easier time deciphering other words that share combining forms. Let’s look at the words "pesticide" and "herbicide."

5.

The suffix '"-cide" most likely means:

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B.
C.
D.
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7.

Before any population of a species of crop pest can become resistant to a pesticide, the population of pests must:

A.
B.
C.
D.
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