Financial Times FT.com

Agricultural pollution: Inputs that place huge pressure on the land

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent

Published: January 26 2010 16:56 | Last updated: January 26 2010 16:56

Intensive agriculture has enabled the production of cheap food around the world, and the massive population expansion of the past six decades.

The growth of “agribusinesses” that have consolidated the raising of livestock from small farms into huge centralised units, and transformed cropland from a patchwork quilt of fields into vast acreages of monoculture crops, has led to efficiencies, yield increases and economies of scale unthinkable before.

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