Limited Knowledge of Agriculture in our Society Essay

Many have heard the phrase, â€Å"Where would we be without agriculture? Hungry and Naked.† Ye,t the understanding of this phrase seems to be very limited. Knowledge of agriculture, as a whole, is very limited, to the point where people think that food comes from the grocery store instead of from the farms of hard working men and women who spend their days working in the fields and pastures. The combination of unrealistic legislation, corporate greed, and an ignorant consumer, that is today, four generations or more removed from the farm, has led to a huge gap in agriculture literacy in this country. Basically, people don’t know where their food comes from and as we’ve all heard, â€Å"we fear what we don’t understand.† The Food Police, while they†¦show more content†¦Organic production is known for being tastier, healthier and more sustainable. Consumers of organic food believe several misconceptions. One misconception is that pesticides and fertilizers are not used in crop production and that not using these contributes to or affects the taste. However, no scientific evidence has been found to prove this theory. In fact, there are only one or two studies done out of more than a hundred that show that organic produce has a higher level of nutrients. The simple fact is that organic food cannot travel as far, and the nonorganic and fresher produce tend to taste better. Secondly, it is commonly thought that in order for crops to be labeled as organic by the USDA, the farmer cannot use pesticide, herbicide, or fertilizer. However, the USDA only requires that organic farmers use natural or non-synthetic pesticide, herbicide, and fertilizer. Natural products such as copper and sulfur are often u sed in organic farming as pesticides and fungicides, however, we would never purposefully ingest these compounds either. Moreover, these natural pesticides are just as carcinogenic as their synthetic equivalents. In fact, 99.9 percent of the pesticides consumed by the public are natural. Not to mention, the cost of organic produce is much higher than normal produce. Consumers can literallyShow MoreRelatedThe Greatest Known Prehistoric Individual916 Words   |  4 Pagesof the ability to gain knowledge about the world. Learning about ancestors can bring knowledge about how people in the past had lived and how it can be used to compare today s society and culture. Written documents enhance the ability to understand the past. These references are not available before the activity writing and recording was done. This time period before writing and recording is called prehistory. In order to understand this period, one would obtain knowledge from research done by evolutionaryRead MoreHo w Technology Has Changed Our Lives1606 Words   |  7 PagesA few centuries ago, before technology was underdeveloped due to limited resources and knowledge, communication between countries on the opposite end of the world was extremely slow or not possible. Most people did not know much about other lands, people, and cultures. What people thought they knew about the world was often wrong or inaccurate. However, within the past hundred years, the pace of our technology has accelerated rapidly. Nowadays traveling across the globe in less than 24 hours is notRead MoreCan Society Exist Without Religion? Essay1019 Words   |  5 Pagesearly human societies could have existed without religion, the answer would be a resounding no. Their collective knowledge was simply not considerable enough to explain the pertinent questions about life that faced them everyday. It’s human nature to seek answers to the unknown, and with each generation the human race is becoming exponentially mor e intelligent; able to explain more about our world with each new discovery. Although religion was an essential institution in early societies, a greaterRead MoreCommunity Food Security And Food Availability And Accessibility1310 Words   |  6 Pagesenvironmentally sustainable way (Desjardins et al, 2002). However, reduced agriculture land due to increased urbanization has decreased the accessibility of food to the public and has led to food insecurity in many communities locally and globally. The rising urbanized general public has a limited understanding of food since food is usually produced some miles away (Iverson et al, 2014). In recent years, the popularity of urban agriculture and community gardens are raising in many cities in North AmericaRead MoreThe Problem Of A World Problem1281 Words   |  6 Pages11.2 billion people. The exponential growth of population can be traced to the increase of global development. Hite and Seitz attributed the population booms to three maj or factors that influenced development and population. Beginning with the agriculture boom, people began to grow their populations because they could sustain more people with the more food they were growing. Then came the industrial revolution, which increased the quality of life for people, causing them to once again increase populationsRead MoreEssay on The Worse Mistake in Human History1398 Words   |  6 Pagescivilization, allowed for more leisure time in which people could then focus on arts and allowed for a higher yielding, more consistent and reliable food source. Despite some of the innovations that sprang from agriculture, upon a closer look, we can see that with the advent of agriculture came class division, gender inequality, less leisure time, overpopulation, diseases, deficient diets and starvation. The transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural food production may have been the worstRead MoreWhy Do We Need Agriculture929 Words   |  4 PagesMany claim t o be independent individuals so that one wonders: Do we actually need agriculture? In agriculture there are three different kinds of chemicals sprayed on crops for a variety of reasons: pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer. Pesticides are used to illuminate unwanted insects and (as the named suggests) parasites that may harm the seeds, as well as the crops. Companies and the Ling farm trying to get rid of fatal insects, whereas they try to their best not to harm the valuable onesRead MoreUrban Agriculture Essay example1627 Words   |  7 Pagestoday’s 21st century of technological achievements, society is more in tune with which new cellular devices are able to open the front door of your house with â€Å"just the touch of one key†. It is this very co-dependence on technology that has lead to the lost of our connection with the foundation of life: earth and what it produces. With the world’s population at a staggering 6,881,821,283 count and growing reports the 2010 U.S Census Bureau, we as a society today face issues like world starvation, widespreadRead MoreEssay The Spread of People, Agriculture, and Disease1405 Words   |  6 PagesThe Spread of People, Agriculture, and Disea se It is obvious that as humans have traveled and exploited the world for their own purposes, their actions have had drastic effects on the environment as they deforest the land and introduce foreign flora and fauna to different ecosystems that may not be able to cope with them. What is not as obvious is that as humans have affected the environment, so the environment has also affected humans. While humans have settled down and chosen anRead MoreBiotechnology : Genetically Modified Foods1698 Words   |  7 Pagesphysicians are also able to select embryos that do not have special genetic characteristics, such as cystic fibrosis, limiting the risk of disease in the child. Scientists have recently made many break-throughs and rapid advances in and addition to our knowledge of the human genome, and have developed a way where in the future, it may be possible to replace faulty DNA with perfectly healthy DNA – germ line therapy. This is carried out on sperm, eggs or embryos, but has only been successfully tested on