Ecosystems, Sustainability and Animal Agriculture

          As the human population increases, the amount of food supplies is becoming far more and much more essential thus Agriculture has turn out to be one of the most observed areas. Several experiments are carried out to locate ways to optimize energy capture and stop wasting. Mathematics is also introduced in to agricultural practices since folks have also started to pay far more attention in to efficiency and sustainability of their farms, attempting to calculate energy input and output ratios. Energy outputs are estimated by the direct conversion of item yields of mass to energy for example a corn grain yield of 7000 kg is equivalent to a yield of about 24.five million kcal, but determining energy input is much harder because there are a lot of kinds of input like labour, transportation and machinery and to make the matters worse they are hard to quantify. Nevertheless these values will present info about the dependence on exogenous energy sources.

The Ecosystem Idea

            An ecosystem is defined as an assemblage of organisms and their associated chemical and physical environment (Briske and Heitschmidt, 1991). An ecosystem can be basically anything from a fish bowl to a country offering we can define its boundaries. It is created up of four components, one living and 3 non living. The abiotic (non living) component defines the chemical and physical environment of the biotic (living) component. These could be the atmosphere, climate and the soil. The three biotic components are the Producers which are organisms that capture solar (Sun) energy, Consumers which obtain their energy by consuming other organisms and the final components would be the Decomposers which are typically bacteria or fungi they decompose unused material and recycle them back to the ecosystem to be utilised once more. (see http://www.the-farm-organization-gym.com/images/solar-flow-pyramid500.jpg)

         Everything in an ecosystem is recycled but the rules of thermodynamics even so, decrease the efficiency of energy flow between trophic levels because most of the energy is converted to heat energy, which is useless (unless a mechanism has been setup to use it). Nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and water are all re-employed inside an ecosystem very efficiently in contrast to energy.

Agriculture

         Agriculture is defined as the enterprise of managing resources to capture energy from the Sun and transfer it to folks. So success in this area is closely linked with the three key factors which are the efficiency of capture of solar energy, harnessing and assimilation of that energy. There are many practices which attempt to boost all these points like irrigation and fertilization which enables plants to grow and live in optimum conditions,  using insecticides which eliminates the insects from the food chains so the energy is transferred directly to humans and doctoring sick animals which increases the performances of these organisms.

Sustainable Agriculture

         Sustainable agriculture is defined as an agriculture that can be practiced continually for eternity. It need to not need any exogenous energy to function. This sort is becoming far more and far more essential due to the fact the amount of fossil fuels is starting to come down to alarmingly low levels but there comes a key dilemma, fossil fuels are the reason that agriculturalists create an abundance of food. As the use of fertilizers and fossil fuels are increased the yield increases also but not in proportion so the energy output/input ratio decreases. This brings a challenge to scientists to develop technology which will preserve the high yields of agricultural products but also growing the ecological deficiencies.

Tests and Results

         Three experiments were done to see which agricultural practice is the most effective in energy transport. Initial 1 was calving animals in spring until they are grown to a considerable size then slaughtered, second one, calving them in spring then stocking them then slaughtering, and the final 1 is calving the animals in autumn then stocking then slaughtering.

The results showed that all the practices had been heavily reliant on fossil fuels, which is not very good news as they are non renewable. The machines used, fertilisers etc, all need fossil fuels at some point.

Discussion

         How are we going to carry on like this? The uncertainty is, how lengthy will the fossil fuels last for and what are the prospective hazards of pollutants like fertilizers?

Conclusion

         Humans often occupy the second or the third trophic levels and in some cases wholly by themselves. Funny factor is that we don’t eat every thing foods have to be flavourful and tender so the challenge is to develop technology that will improve animals so that they produce much more from less and high quality too. This dilemma is created a lot more complex by the truth that the human population of the world is increasing by time.

References

- Heitschmidt, R. Short, R. Grings, E. 1996. Ecosystems, Sustainability and Animal Agriculture. Journal of Animal Science 74, pp.1395-1405

- www.wikipedia.org/ecology