Impacts of rural degradation

Poverty

Capital-intensive farming

Urban/rural impact

Causes of poverty:

  • Rapid population growth
  • Agricultural modernisation
  • Limited non-farm income opportunities
  • Inequitable land distribution, insecure tenure
  • External shock (e.g. drought) and macro-economic impacts

This leads to:

  • Limited access to productive lands
  • Limited credit, technology, for resource management
  • Reduction in common propert resources (CPR's)

Then:

Urban migration

Rural stagnation in dry areas

Greater exploitation of steep hillslopes and grazing lands

Pressure to open forested frontier areas

  • Drought conditions exacerbated
  • Desertification and land degradation
  • Destruction of vegetative cover
  • Threats to biological diversity
  • Fuelwood shortages
  • Declining land productivity
  • Food insecurity
  • Destruction of vegetative cover in watersheds
  • Siltation etc. downstream
  • Soil erosion
  • Threats to biological diversity
  • Declining productivity
  • Fuelwood shortages
  • Downstream flooding etc.
  • Large scale deforestation
  • Flooding, siltation etc. downstream
  • Loss of soil fertility
  • Threats to biological diversity
  • Contributes to global warming
  • Declining land productivity
  • Loss of potential forest-based production

Agro-industrialisation impacts

deforestation

land degradation and desertification

salinisation and contamination of water supplies

air pollution

increasing concerns about the health of long-term farm workers

landscap change

declining biodiversity

Facts

About a third of the world's farmland is already affected by salinisation, erosion or other forms of degradation.

The global cattle population is around 1.5 billion and the pasture required amounts to about a third of the world's agricultural land. A further third of this land is taken up by animal feedcrops.

An estimated 1.3 billion people are employed in the livestock industry.

The balance between livestock and grass is sustainable at present but as demand increases, the pressure that cattle makes on the land may well soon exceed supply.

More cattle means more manure. Manure is often used to retore depleted soil, but it can lead to pollution by heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel, chromium and copper.

Further impacts

Meat consumption

In 2000, global meat consumption was 230 million tonnes. The forecast for 2050 is 465 million tonnes.

There is a strong relationship between meat consumption and rising per person incomes, although anomalies do occur due to cultural traditions.

It is no coincidence that many environmentalists are vegetarian - A study at the University of Chiago calculated that changing from the average American diet to a vegetarian one could cut annual emissions by almost 1.5 tonnes of CO2.

Livestock

Crops

Large-scale farming

Large-scale farming has been expanding geographically into a number of fragile environments, particularly into areas of rainforest.

The State of the World's Animal Genetic Resources, published by the FAO, reported that between 1990 and 2005, the world's total forest area was reduced by 3%. This is a rate of 7.3 million hectares a year.

Mainly due to the uniformity required by large food companies, important breeds of livestock are becoming extinct.

The FAO's State of the World's Animal Genetic Resources report stated that at least one livestock breed a month has been lost over the previous seven years.

Food scientists are concerned about this trend as genetic resources are the basis of food security

Agro-industrialisation is characterised by large areas of monoculture that, among other things, leaves crops more vulnerable to disease due to the depletion of natural systems of pest control.

Monoculture results in reliance on pesticides, which in turn causes a downward environmental cycle.

Surrounding area

Large scale impact

Untreated wastewater is a major pollutant of rivers, which can contaminate estuaries and coastal fishing areas, and can pollute the drinking-water supplies of rural communities downstream.

Urban use of groundwater can result in a depletion of the aquifer to the detriment of small farmers who rely on shallow wells.

In arid areas, cities many km inland can cause saltwater intrusion under coastal areas as a result of groundwater pumping.

The human-industrial complexes of the world are a the main cause of slimate change.