Agriculture is a major part of the United States economy. To increase food abundance, the United States has incorporated various biological and mechanical technologies and innovations. Some of this innovations include genetic engineering and green revolution. Genetic engineering popularly referred to just GE is the biological modification of an animal or plant genetic composition through artificial means. Genetic engineering mostly involves transfer of genes or specific characteristics from one plant or animal into another entirely different plant or animal. Green revolution on the other hand is the increase in capacity to produce food through use agricultural research, development and use of fertilizers, pesticides and other such agricultural innovations.
Impacts of the changes to the environment
Green revolution has helped the United States and much of the developing world to achieve food security in the past 50 years. The production of food more than doubled in the United States during the period of this Green revolution. The use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides has adverse effects on the environment. These particular chemicals are pollutants and have led to increased soil erosion. The new material, the chemicals in specific pollutes the soil and water systems around the farms. Pollution of the soil makes the soil more susceptible to soil erosion, makes the soil productivity to decrease.
Genetic engineering on the other hand despite providing tremendous benefits and increased food production leading to food sufficiency in the United States comes with risks. Genetically engineered crops for instance may cause some of the plants to be invasive or toxic to animals or even human beings. Genetic engineering has led to growth of plants that are resistant to pesticides. Millions of acres of farm land in the United States are affected weeds that are resistant to herbicide glyphosate. In an effort to fight this weed the farmers have result to the used of more toxic herbicides that essentially have done much worse to the environment.
The momentous growth in agricultural technologies is both a good thing but pose risk to the issue of food security in the coming years. Due soil pollution and other such kind of degradation the potential to remain provide in the future is blink. There may be coming hard times ahead in terms of food production if necessary measures to correct the effects of the agricultural technologies on the environment are not taken soon.
References
Hester, R. E., & Harrison, R. M. (2012). Environmental impacts of modern agriculture. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.
Serageldin, I. (1999). Biotechnology and Food Security in the 21st Century. Science, 285(5426), 387-389. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.285.5426.387
