Animal Agriculture The Devastating Environmental Impacts - amazonia.fiocruz.br

That: Animal Agriculture The Devastating Environmental Impacts

David Pimentel e-mail: dp18 cornell. The increasing demands placed on the global water supply threaten biodiversity and the supply of water for food production and other vital human needs.

Search form

Water shortages already exist in many regions, with more than one billion people without adequate drinking water. New water supplies are likely to result from conservation, recycling, and improved water-use efficiency rather than from large development projects.

Water is essential for maintaining an adequate food supply and a productive environment for the human population Animal Agriculture The Devastating Environmental Impacts for other animals, plants, and microbes worldwide. As human populations and economies grow, global freshwater demand has been increasing rapidly Hinrichsen et al. In addition to threatening the human food supply, water shortages severely reduce biodiversity in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, while water pollution facilitates the spread of serious human diseases and diminishes water quality Postel et al.

Humans obtain the great majority of their nutrients from crops and livestock, and these nutrient sources require water, land, and energy for production Pimentel et al. Shortages in food supplies have in part contributed to the global problem of more than 3 billion malnourished people in the world WHO a.

Navigation menu

Two of the most Agriclture malnutrition problems are iron deficiency, affecting 2 billion people, and protein or calorie deficiency, affecting nearly million people WHOb. Iron deficiency and protein or calorie deficiency each result in about 8 million deaths each year WHO The world population currently numbers 6.

The United Nations UN estimates that the global population will increase to approximately 9. Population growth, accompanied by increased water use, will not only severely reduce water availability per person but also create stress on biodiversity in the entire global ecosystem Pimentel et al.

Support OneGreenPlanet

Other major factors that limit water availability include rainfall, temperature, evaporation rates, soil quality, vegetation type, and water runoff. Furthermore, serious difficulties already exist in fairly allocating the world's freshwater resources between and within countries. These conflicts are escalating among new industrial, agricultural, and urban sectors.

In this article, we analyze water use Agticulture individuals and especially by agricultural systems, reporting the interrelationships that exist among population growth, water use and distribution, the status of biodiversity, the natural environment, and the impacts of waterborne human diseases.

Of the estimated 1. The remainder of the fresh water is stored in glaciers, permanent snow, and groundwater aquifers.

Hydrologic cycle

Thus, each year solar energy transfers a significant portion of water from oceans to land areas. This aspect of the hydrologic cycle is vital not only to agriculture but also to human life and natural ecosystems Pimentel et al. Although water is considered a renewable resource because it is replenished by rainfall, its availability is finite in terms of Envkronmental amount available per unit of time in any one region.]