Farming will cause more damage than global warming

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Farming will cause more damage than global warming

 

 

MODERN AGRICULTURE is set to become as bad for the planet's health as global

warming, a team of leading environmental scientists has warned. They list

rainforest destruction, nitrogen pollution and the spread of diseases such as

foot and mouth and BSE among the growing threats from agriculture.

 

``The environmental effects of agriculture are on a trajectory soon to rival

those of climate change,'' says David Tilman, an ecologist at the University of

Minnesota.

 

Tilman and nine other ecologists in the U.S. forecast that over the next 50

years growing populations and an increasing demand for meat will mean the world

needs new farmland covering an area the size of the U.S. Meeting this demand

will probably see the destruction of ``the vast majority of the rainforests and

savannah grasslands in Latin America and central Africa, which harbour a large

portion of the Earth's biological diversity'', Tilman told New Scientist.

 

 

http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/05/24/stories/0824000f.htm

 

 

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