Intensive farming in the context of "Guano"

Land consumption as part of human resource consumption is the conversion of land with healthy soil and intact habitats into areas for industrial agriculture, traffic (road building) and especially urban human settlements. More formally, the EEA has identified three land consuming activities:

1. The expansion of built-up area which can be directly measured;
2. the absolute extent of land that is subject to exploitation by agriculture, forestry or other economic activities; and
3. the over-intensive exploitation of land that is used for agriculture and forestry.

In all of those respects, land consumption is equivalent to typical land use in industrialized regions and civilizations.

Soil erosion is the denudation or wearing away of the upper layer of soil. It is a form of soil degradation. This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents, that is, water, ice (glaciers), snow, air (wind), plants, and animals (including humans). In accordance with these agents, erosion is sometimes divided into water erosion, glacial erosion, snow erosion, wind (aeolian) erosion, zoogenic erosion and anthropogenic erosion such as tillage erosion. Soil erosion may be a slow process that continues relatively unnoticed, or it may occur at an alarming rate causing a serious loss of topsoil. The loss of soil from farmland may be reflected in reduced crop production potential, lower surface water quality and damaged drainage networks. Soil erosion could also cause sinkholes.

Human activities have increased by 10–50 times the rate at which erosion is occurring world-wide.Excessive (or accelerated) erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems. On-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and (on natural landscapes) ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems worldwide.

Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distinct from weathering which involves no movement. Removal of rock or soil as clastic sediment is referred to as physical or mechanical erosion; this contrasts with chemical erosion, where soil or rock material is removed from an area by dissolution. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, or for thousands of kilometres.

Agents of erosion include rainfall; bedrock wear in rivers; coastal erosion by the sea and waves; glacial plucking, abrasion, and scour; areal flooding; wind abrasion; groundwater processes; and mass movement processes in steep landscapes like landslides and debris flows. The rates at which such processes act control how fast a surface is eroded. Typically, physical erosion proceeds the fastest on steeply sloping surfaces, and rates may also be sensitive to some climatically controlled properties including amounts of water supplied (e.g., by rain), storminess, wind speed, wave fetch, or atmospheric temperature (especially for some ice-related processes). Feedbacks are also possible between rates of erosion and the amount of eroded material that is already carried by, for example, a river or glacier. The transport of eroded materials from their original location is followed by deposition, which is arrival and emplacement of material at a new location.

Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin and contains essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells to provide energy, maintain life, or support growth. Different species of animals have different feeding behaviours that satisfy the needs of their metabolisms and have evolved to fill specific ecological niches within specific geographical contexts.

Omnivorous humans are highly adaptable and have adapted to obtaining food in many different ecosystems. Humans generally use cooking to prepare food for consumption. The majority of the food energy required is supplied by the industrial food industry, which produces food through intensive agriculture and distributes it through complex food processing and food distribution systems. This system of conventional agriculture relies heavily on fossil fuels, which means that the food and agricultural systems are one of the major contributors to climate change, accounting for as much as 37% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Extensive farming or extensive agriculture (as opposed to intensive farming) is an agricultural production system that uses small inputs of labor, fertilizers, and capital, relative to the land area being farmed.

Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting pest life cycles and soil borne pathogens by temporarily removing their hosts. Crop rotation systems typically called for some of a farmer's fields to be left fallow each year.

The increase in intensive farming, including the use of cover crops in lieu of fallow practices, has caused a loss of acreage of fallow land, as well as field margins, hedges, and wasteland. This has reduced biodiversity; fallows have been the primary habitat for farmland bird populations.

An agrochemical or agrichemical, a contraction of agricultural chemical, is a chemical product used in conventional or industrial agriculture. Agrochemical typically refers to pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. The term agrochemical is sometimes used informally synonymously with pesticides, sometimes also informally to mean pesticides and fertilizers, and sometimes more correctly to include all chemicals used in agriculture. Other chemicals used in agriculture are plant hormones and plant growth regulators (PGRs), insect attractants, insect repellents, plant defense inducers, herbicide safeners, adjuvents and co-formulants, soil conditioners and soil amendments, liming and acidifying agents. For livestock feed additives, animal growth regulators, anthelmintics and other antiparasitics are used.

In agriculture, the yield is a measurement of the amount of a crop grown, or product such as wool, meat or milk produced, per unit area of land. The seed ratio is another way of calculating yields.

Innovations, such as the use of fertilizer, the creation of better farming tools, and new methods of farming and improved crop varieties have improved yields. The higher the yield and more intensive use of the farmland, the higher the productivity and profitability of a farm; this increases the well-being of farming families. Surplus crops beyond the needs of subsistence agriculture can be sold or bartered. The more grain or fodder a farmer can produce, the more draft animals such as horses and oxen could be supported and harnessed for labour and production of manure. Increased crop yields also means fewer hands are needed on farm, freeing them for industry and commerce. This, in turn, led to the formation and growth of cities, which then translated into an increased demand for foodstuffs or other agricultural products.

A fertilizer or fertiliser is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from liming materials or other non-nutrient soil amendments. Many sources of fertilizer exist, both natural and industrially produced. For most modern agricultural practices, fertilization focuses on three main macro nutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) with occasional addition of supplements like rock flour for micronutrients. Farmers apply these fertilizers in a variety of ways: through dry or pelletized or liquid application processes, using large agricultural equipment, or hand-tool methods.

Historically, fertilization came from natural or organic sources: compost, animal manure, human manure, harvested minerals, crop rotations, and byproducts of human-nature industries (e.g. fish processing waste, or bloodmeal from animal slaughter). However, starting in the 19th century, after innovations in plant nutrition, an agricultural industry developed around synthetically created agrochemical fertilizers. This transition was important in transforming the global food system, allowing for larger-scale industrial agriculture with large crop yields.