C7. Agriculture and Biodiversity

Question 1

The impact of agriculture on biodiversity
Farmers try to maximise the amount of food they can produce from a given
area of land. But many of the methods they use reduce biodiversity: (5 things)

Answer 1

• Woodland clearance is done to increase the area of farmland. It directly reduces the number of trees and sometimes the number of different tree species. It also destroys habitats, so some species could lose their shelter and food source. This means that species will die or be forced to migrate to another suitable area, further reducing biodiversity.
• Hedgerow removal is also done to increase the area of farmland by
  turning lots of small fields into fewer large fields. This reduces biodiversity
  for the same reasons as woodland clearance.
• Pesticides are chemicals that kill organisms (pests) that feed on crops. This reduces diversity by directly killing the pests. Also, any species that feed on the pests will lose a food source, so their numbers could decrease too.
• Herbicides are chemicals that kill unwanted plants (weeds). This reduces
  plant diversity and could reduce the number of organisms that feed on the weeds.
• Monoculture is when farmers have fields containing only one type of plant. A single type of plant reduces biodiversity directly and will support fewer organisms (e.g. as a habitat or food source), which further reduces biodiversity.

Question 2

Conservation schemes

What is agriculture and what does it do?

What does biodiversity do?

Answer 2

• Agriculture is one way of producing the resources we need from the environment - we need it to produce food and fibres for clothing, as well as some medicines and fuels.
• Biodiversity helps maintain the environment. It provides us with new sources of food and medicines, and it benefits agriculture, e.g. a wide variety of insects help to pollinate crops.
• So there needs to be a balance between agriculture and biodiversity. Conservationists try to achieve this through conservation schemes.