What are the advantages and disadvantages of conventional farming?

Question

Please help!

Answer 1

You have a couple of good answers here already-- conventional farming allows farmers to grow a lot of food to feed the masses.  The crops are more homogenous and even (so they tend to look more "perfect", too.

A downside that isn't discussed as often is that conventional farming emphasizes certain popular items (like wheat, corn, oats) while moving our tastes away from other items that used to be part of people's diets to a greater extent (e.g., random grains like quinoa, or unusual fruits and vegetables).  This is unfortunate dietarily, because the variety is good for our digestion (and palate), but also because the variety is good for the farmland itself.  Planting and replanting a particular area for one crop leaches the soil of nutrients needed to sustain that crop, so we have to let land lie fallow for awhile to recover.  As I understand it, planting less intensively and with more variety helps the land itself support such growth.  Smaller, less conventional farmers tend to rotate more crops more often, or so I am told.

Answer 2

with petrolium biproduct fertilizer, you can grow enough crops to feed the world, you cant do that with traditional manure, soy bean/cotton seed meal fertilizer.  With the use of heavy machinery, one family can cultivate a huge amount of land, where with the use of a mule and plow or team of mules, a family might only be able to cultivate 100 acres or less.  The United States has the ability to feed the entire world thanks to the use of modern farming techniques.  The environmentalists would like to take these tools away from us, which would cause wide spread starvation right here in the U.S., not to mention third world countries.

Answer 3

farmers

Answer 4

Conventional farming I assume your meaning modern practises ie spraying fertilizing as opposed to organic or old fashioned like horse etc. Modern practices control errosion better pollute more as they get bigger ,fertilizer in the water aquifer etc. Old ways and organic methods cannot feed 6 or 7 billion people in the world.

Answer 5

I'm going to very much simpify this, instead of going into great detail.

Advantages: Currently the ONLY way to feed the masses of people on our overpopulated planted.  

Yes a few people can afford to buy organic, truely humanely raised animals from small farmers like me.  Yet this is not reality...reality is that is takes the huge mono crop farms to raise food for people.

Disadvantages: Goes totally against nature (nature hates mono crops, whether they are plant or livestock), which causes major problems in terms of disease, pest.  If you have a mono crop, is it VERY prone to attacks by disease, and pest.  That dramatically increases the need for pesticides, or medication to be used.  

With the movement of farms to become titanic  in size, and the removal of livestock it has ment that farmers have turned to chemicals to fertilize the crops, instead of manure.  

These chemicals are making our drinking water toxic, and causing serrious problems in the oceans.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years