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Feeding the World & Organic Food (organic farming (by avoiding the use…
Feeding the World & Organic Food
making a food organic
it has to be raised without artificial fertilizers or pesticides.
If the food comes from livestock, the animals have to be free of antibiotics or growth hormones.
organic food can't be genetically modified or treated with radiation.
If a food contains only organic ingredients, it can be labeled, 100 percent organic.
organic farming
beneficial for the environment.
can make the soil more fertile
balance insect populations
helpful bugs keep the destructive ones under control
by avoiding the use of toxic fertilizers or pesticides, it can reduce pollution in the air, soil, and water.
instead of using harsh chemicals, farmers can use manure and compost made from plant and animal waste.
People who support organic farming say that the food is more nutritious, safer to eat, and better tasting.
The real difference between organic and non-organic food is that organic food is grown, handled, and processed in a more environmentally-friendly way.
Agricultural Revolution
Somewhere around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, humans were living all over the globe in small, loosely organized groups of hunter-gatherers.
Eventually, people in the Middle East, Africa, and Western Asia began to settle down into agricultural villages.
These bands moved around a lot, hunting whatever animals they could find and using available plants for food, medicine, and even soap.
Agriculture is the process of modifying the environment in order to use it more effectively.
These villages formed when people began to domesticate plants and animals.
Domesticating
something makes it useful to humans.
With their domesticated plants and animals, villagers had a steady source of food.
Animals could be used to work the land, as well as supply leather, hides, furs, and fertilizer.
That can include anything from roping livestock, to taming a dog, to selectively breeding vegetables to make them bigger and more nutritious.
Fertile Crescent
Experts believe that the very first place where humans participated in agriculture was something called the Fertile Crescent.
This area of what is now Northern Africa and the Middle East had fertile soil, gentle rains, and long springs and summers, all of which made it an ideal spot for farming.
The agricultural life wasn't easy at first. People didn't have the stress of moving around constantly, but they became more vulnerable to elements like weather.
their diets suffered from lack of variety; early villagers could only grow limited types of food.
Then there are the issues of waste and disease.
The people tended to be smaller and less healthy than hunter-gatherer populations.
There were no toilets or plumbing back then, so towns were probably pretty dirty.
And with so many people living close together in filthy conditions, diseases spread easily.
Agriculture doesn't seem like such a great development at first, but our lives would be really different if our ancestors had never settled down.
For one thing, extra food stocks allowed villages to get through hard times and to feed more and more people. So this new food surplus led to a growth in the population, or number of people in an area.
Living in large communities allowed people to specialize their labor.
That means they became experts in certain areas and traded with their neighbors for everything else.
Instead of having to take care of everything themselves, individuals could focus on what they were good at.
This division of labor led to big gains in technology and wealth.