ABSTRACT
In one sense, nothing could be more obvious than agriculture’s importance for environmental quality. Field crops and animal grazing - the key production activities of agriculture - are easily the most spatially extensive human activities having impact upon land masses. The potential effects of agriculture on soil and water have been known for centuries and were almost certainly among the first environmental impacts to be recognized. The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s provided a vivid example of agriculturally based environmental catastrophe, and it has been immortalized in literature, film, and folklore (Worster, 1979). Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), often described as the book that sparked the environmental movement, is a diatribe against chemicals used primarily for agriculture. The genera public continues to associate agricultural pesticides with environmental impact and risk to human health.
