Michael Wright How Changes in Farming have altered the rural environment?
Farming has experienced many changes related to biological, chemical, mechanical and environmental developments. It has also developed because of new policies introduced and these development shave had a large impact on rural environments.
One of the general ways agriculture has developed is by agribusiness. Agribusinesses are farms owned by large companies usually trans-national. These farms are very large with high capital investment and use modern technologies to increase crop yields. With these farms profit is the most important and often at the expense of social and environmental factors. An example of an agribusiness is Unilever who invest heavily in the developed and developing world. They employ over 120,000 people in the developing word in plantations and in factories for low wages. The impacts are mainly negative for rural environments because wages are likely to be lower and the local people have little control over farming, however jobs are secure which is needed as farming jobs falling by 14% in the 1990s..
Farming has also changed because of CAP. CAP is the Common Agriculture Policy and is a EU policy designed to stop or slow the movement of rural workers to the city. The aims of CAP were to ensure a good standard of living for farmers, give farmers a guaranteed market for their crops, provide grants for set aside farming and to increase productivity through technical progress. CAP is also one of the main reasons for the growth of agribusiness. One of the effects CAP had was the removal hedgerow. In the UK 377,000 km of hedgerow were destroyed between 1947 and 1990. Hedgerows were removed to make fields larger to make it easier for large machines to operate. Other reasons for the removal of hedgerows are they are a habitat for pests, which damage crops, and they need maintaining. However hedgerows provided homes for a lot of wildlife, they acted as a windbreak reducing soil erosion and they are part of rural heritage.
Farming has experienced many changes related to biological, chemical, mechanical and environmental developments. It has also developed because of new policies introduced and these development shave had a large impact on rural environments.
One of the general ways agriculture has developed is by agribusiness. Agribusinesses are farms owned by large companies usually trans-national. These farms are very large with high capital investment and use modern technologies to increase crop yields. With these farms profit is the most important and often at the expense of social and environmental factors. An example of an agribusiness is Unilever who invest heavily in the developed and developing world. They employ over 120,000 people in the developing word in plantations and in factories for low wages. The impacts are mainly negative for rural environments because wages are likely to be lower and the local people have little control over farming, however jobs are secure which is needed as farming jobs falling by 14% in the 1990s..
Farming has also changed because of CAP. CAP is the Common Agriculture Policy and is a EU policy designed to stop or slow the movement of rural workers to the city. The aims of CAP were to ensure a good standard of living for farmers, give farmers a guaranteed market for their crops, provide grants for set aside farming and to increase productivity through technical progress. CAP is also one of the main reasons for the growth of agribusiness. One of the effects CAP had was the removal hedgerow. In the UK 377,000 km of hedgerow were destroyed between 1947 and 1990. Hedgerows were removed to make fields larger to make it easier for large machines to operate. Other reasons for the removal of hedgerows are they are a habitat for pests, which damage crops, and they need maintaining. However hedgerows provided homes for a lot of wildlife, they acted as a windbreak reducing soil erosion and they are part of rural heritage.
