How sustainable agriculture can address the environmental and human health harms of industrial agriculture.

By Leo Horrigan, R. Lawrence, Polly Walker. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2002

1,225 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The industrial agriculture system consumes fossil fuel, water, and topsoil at unsustainable rates. It contributes to numerous forms of environmental degradation, including air and water pollution, soil depletion, diminishing biodiversity, and fish die-offs. Meat production contributes disproportionately to these problems, in part because feeding grain to livestock to produce meat--instead of feeding it directly to humans--involves a large energy loss, making animal agriculture more resource intensive than other forms of food production. The proliferation of factory-style animal agriculture creates environmental and public health concerns, including pollution from the high concentration of animal wastes and the extensive use of antibiotics, which may compromise their effectiveness in medical use. At the consumption end, animal fat is implicated in many of the chronic degenerative diseases that afflict industrial and newly industrializing societies, particularly cardiovascular disease and some cancers. In terms of human health, both affluent and poor countries could benefit from policies that more equitably distribute high-protein foods. The pesticides used heavily in industrial agriculture are associated with elevated cancer risks for workers and consumers and are coming under greater scrutiny for their links to endocrine disruption and reproductive dysfunction. In this article we outline the environmental and human health problems associated with current food production practices and discuss how these systems could be made more sustainable.

Subfields: Ecology, Food Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9e9291e56855186e8f29b202b00be41adfd0c97e

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Citations in the corpus

Reducing Energy Inputs in the US Food System (2008, background): “In addition, there are a reported 300,000 non-fatal pesticide poisonings (EPA 1992) per year in the USA, and pesticides in the diet have been shown to increase the odds of developing cancer ( Horrigan et al. 2002 ).”
Hydroponics – A Review (2020, background): “agriculture are avoided including high and inefficient use of water, large land requirements, high concentrations of nutrients and pesticides, and soil degradation accompanied by erosion (Treftz and Omaye, 2016; Horrigan et al., 2002).”
Bioenergy and sustainable development (2007, background): “pesticides are still not fully understood but are now believed to include elevated cancer risks and disruption of the body’s reproductive, immune, endocrine, and nervous systems (140).”
Accumulation by Dispossession and Socio‐Environmental Conflicts Caused by the Expansion of Agribusiness in Argentina (2015, background): “pesticides and fertilizer), many of which generate waste that harms the environment; (b) uses large quantities of non-renewable fossil fuels; and (c) tends towards concentration of production, driving out small producers and undermining rural communities (Horrigan et al. 2002).”
Mediterranean diet pyramid today. Science and cultural updates (2011, background): “Finally, the consumption of local foods contributes to improving local economies((60)).”
The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact (2009, background): “Furthermore, given that the average farm requires 3 kcal of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 kcal of food (before accounting for energy requirements of food processing and transportation) [14], wasted food accounts for ,300 million barrels of oil per year representing ,4% of the total US oil consumpt”
Microalgal Biotechnology: Prospects and Applications (2012, background): “Chemically fertilized plots also show less biologic activity in the soil food web (the microscopic organisms that make up the soil ecosystem) than do plots fertilized organically with manure or other biologic sources of fertility [95].”
Crop–livestock integration beyond the farm level: a review (2016, background): “Today, environmental and social impacts (water pollution, food pollution, etc.) related to specialized and intensive agricultural systems (Horrigan et al. 2002) are no longer accepted by some members of society.”
Guest Editorial, part of a Special Feature on A Social-Ecological Analysis of Diversified Farming Systems: Benefits, Costs, Obstacles, and Enabling Policy Frameworks Diversified Farming Systems: An Agroecological, Systems-based Alternative to Modern Industrial Agriculture (2012, background): “Key Words: agroecology; ecological diversification; food justice; food sovereignty; industrialized agriculture”