Soil and Agriculture- Environmental Science

Explain how Dutch agriculture uses technology to fully control the growing environment of crops.

Dutch agriculture is characterized by the growth of plants and crops in greenhouses. In greenhouses all aspects of growth can be artificially controlled, including the artificial imposition of climatic conditions and artificial growth patterns (i.e. hydroponics) and even the mechanical automation of farming.

Explain why the produce from tropical plantations are profitable to the local communities that grow them, but not as profitable as finished goods.

Tropical plantations provide a unique source of income for locals in many countries because they produce crops, such as cocoa, rubber and tea, desired around the world that can only be grown in tropical climates. However, the produce of these tropical plantations also tend to be simple raw materials that are merely the first step in a production process that yields more profitable products. While the communities do benefit from the production of the raw materials, there is greater profit in the production of finished goods.

Explain the difference between selective breeding and genetic engineering in the development of food crops with desirable traits.

Both genetic engineering and selective breeding aim to develop crops with desirable traits, but with selective breeding only traits that are natively found in the genome of the species can be isolated and expressed. With genetic engineering the desired genes can be directly manipulated or inserted into the DNA of the organism, so the potential list of insertions is not limited to those natively found in the organism.

Which of the following is true concerning pastoralism?

It revolves around herding livestock.

Which of the following is not a method for addressing soil contamination?

None of the above

Explain why conservation is the most important strategy in the soil management programs of agriculture.

Pedogenesis, the formation of new soil, is a slow process that can take hundreds or thousands of years to complete. Human agriculture, meanwhile, relies upon using the same parcel of land for agriculture year after year, either for crops or livestock. Therefore it is easier to prevent the degradation of the old soil than it is to go through the process of generating new soil.

Explain how flooding rice fields reduces the need for herbicides and pesticides in rice farming.

Rice has a submerged growth state while most weeds do not. Therefore, flooding rice fields reduces the growth of these less robust pests without negatively affecting the rice crop. Flooding the fields also deters many kinds of vermin that would otherwise live in the soil and harm the rice plants because they cannot breathe underwater.

Which of the following is not true concerning crop rotation?

a. It reduces soil compaction by turning the soil.

Which of the following are characteristic of American agriculture?

c. high levels of productivity and mechanization

Where would contour farming and terraces be most likely to be found?

on hilly, mountainous farm land