Integrated Farming Essay Example
Today, more than 7 billion humans are living in this world and that number will continue to increase each second. We, humans, need so many things to live. Demand for necessities such as food, water, clothing, and shelter will increase in line with global population growth. When the demand for these products increases, more space to grow is needed to fill in the demand and to avoid scarcity of basic needs. Integrated farming is one of the ways that could fill the demand for food, shelter, water, and clothes sustainably. Integrated farming is where both animal farming and crop farming are combined.
Usually, farmers only produce one type of agricultural product on a piece of land and this could affect us in one way or another. First, when a farmer uses his acres of land to just grow crops, the farmer might be highly dependent on chemical pesticides and fertilizer. The reason is that the farmer has little to no access to many natural, eco friendly, or at least safe for human consumption fertilizer and pesticide as he or she doesn't have any animals that provide them. On the other side, poultry farmers(chicken) for example usually use well-balanced protein sources to produce a maximum amount of muscle, organ skin, and feather. Antibiotics are also widely injected into the chicken’s body to stimulate appetite, control harmful bacteria, and prevent diseases.
Even though pesticides only cause mild health effects to us but at chronic levels, pesticides such as fungicides could cause allergies, irritation to skin and eyes, and nausea. Farmers and farmworkers who are exposed to these toxic products are the most impacted.
Integrated farming is introduced to combat some problems caused by single produce farms. International Islamic University of Malaysia, IIUM has not yet taken part in integrated farming but some efforts have been made to make our campus more green and sustainable and can be seen in some parts of the campus. This report will show some ways IIUM could do to improve its involvement in a greener and more sustainable campus area.
