ABSTRACT
Agriculture refers to the cultivation of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food and other products for human use. It is both a major consumer of the planet’s natural resources, including land, water, soil, energy and biota, and a supplier of various environmental and social ‘services’. Benefits for humans – i.e. ‘social services’ – include the production of food and the generation of employment, while environmental services include the release of oxygen, the pollination of plants, carbon storage and even the preservation of some forms of biodiversity. At a global scale, agriculture faces the ongoing challenge of providing greater food security for a growing population yet expanded production in the second half of the twentieth century has failed to seriously close the gap between rich and poor nations and in some areas food security even fell. Expanded production has, however, increased the environmental impacts of agriculture, some of which are relatively obvious, for example the clearing of forests or the release of pollutants, included greenhouse gases. This chapter will show that agriculture also generates environmental and social impacts that are less obvious and sometimes quite unexpected. Thus, agricultural production has major implications for global sustainability.
