Effects Of Excessive Pesticide
What is the goal of agriculture? Mainly, it is to produce healthy food, affordable for consumers to purchase, while ensuring that farmers are able to earn a decent income. Recently, with greater environmental awareness in society in general, it is also now very important to protect the agricultural environment. This is a big challenge for farmers as they must still obtain reasonable yields and produce quality produce in order to meet the demands of the market. Both these can be severely affected by harmful organisms, commonly referred to as pests (weeds, disease, etc.) that compete against, infect or damage the cultivated crop in a detrimental manner. The most economic and effective way to ...
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an always shrinking base of agricultural land, and the substantial damage that can be inflicted by pests (e.g. insects, diseases, weeds, rodents, birds) on crops is the margin between a good harvest and a bad one. Pests can reduce the quality of a harvest as well as its quantity. Since the quality of food is increasingly important to consumers, a pest could reduce the value of a crop or make it unsaleable. But it is important to keep in mind that pests are not the only cause of yield
reduction and of lower quality produce: factors such as soil fertility and availability of water may have a greater influence in a particular situation.
Hence, crop protection has always been an important component of agriculture, leading to the development and employment of measures that can limit damage, such as synthetic chemicals. Easily stored for long periods in a compact form, easily applied at very short notice (provided the machinery is available and the weather conditions are suitable), they ...
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The 1940s saw the development of 2,4-D (2,4-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid), an organic compound that is a highly selective systemic herbicide. Such herbicides are now widely used. Several such compounds, including 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid), have been banned by the Environmental Protection Agency as potentially dangerous. 2,4,5-T was used in Agent Orange (a defoliant employed by U.S. forces in Vietnam), which has been linked to some diseases suffered by veterans. Since Agent Orange, heightened awareness of possible ecological and health dangers attributable to herbicides has resulted in reevaluation of many compounds and has called indiscriminate use into question.
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Effects Of Excessive Pesticide. (2004, March 11). Retrieved November 22, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Effects-Of-Excessive-Pesticide/4401
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"Effects Of Excessive Pesticide." Essayworld.com. March 11, 2004. Accessed November 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Effects-Of-Excessive-Pesticide/4401.
"Effects Of Excessive Pesticide." Essayworld.com. March 11, 2004. Accessed November 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Effects-Of-Excessive-Pesticide/4401.
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