1 / 14

Agribusiness

Agribusiness. The subjects to focus on. Waste Power Pollution. The Business Vs The Family. Before we get started…. What’s agribusiness? Agribusiness is the business of farming plants and animals. Agribusiness can be divided between family farms and larger scale corporate owned farms.

lars-sharp
Download Presentation

Agribusiness

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Agribusiness • The subjects to focus on. • Waste • Power • Pollution The Business Vs The Family

  2. Before we get started…. What’s agribusiness? Agribusiness is the business of farming plants and animals. • Agribusiness can be divided between family farms and larger scale corporate owned farms. • What’s a feedlot? Feedlots or AFO (Animal Feeding Operation) are corporeity owned facilities where animals are raised.

  3. Pro 1 Waste. • Animal waste can be used as a effective fertilizer, especially cow manure.

  4. Cattle feedlots produce a lot more waste than a smaller family farm, after all, a single cow produces 148 pounds of wet manure every day! That’s equivalent to what 20-40 people make! Imagine what thousands make! That would fertilize a ton of crops!

  5. Small family farms generally use their waste on their own crops, or sell it to turn a profit. So they rarely have left overs. • Some crops that can be grown with manure are • Barley • Wheat • Oats • Oilseeds • Soybeans • Corn • Hay

  6. Pro 2 Power • Cattle produce ridiculous amounts of methane that can be burned for power! Each cow ‘produces’ 280 liters of methane per day!

  7. Using cow poots we could power the country for years. It’s a renewable resource, as long as we keep the cattle alive. • In Kern County, Calif., a company called BioEnergy Solutions uses that method to produce 650,000 cubic feet (18,406 cubic meters) of biogas from manure, enough to power 200,000 households. • In 2010, a team of British engineers created a car that runs on methane, which functions on the same as any conventional gasoline fueled car. The car dubbed Bio-Bug can reach speeds up to 114mph.

  8. Con 1 Waste • Improperly stored or used, animal waste can pollute rivers and underground drinking water supplies. This could render areas nearly unliveable for years.

  9. “Animal waste has the potential to contribute pollutants such as nutrients (e.g., nitrate, phosphorous), organic matter, sediments, pathogens (e.g., giardia, cryptosporidium), heavy metals, hormones, antibiotics and ammonia to the waters we use for drinking, swimming and fishing.”

  10. Con 2 Pollution • Though methane can be a vary effective source of power, it is also a devastating green house gas.

  11. “A 2006 United Nations report estimated that cows, along with other livestock like sheep and goats, contribute about 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet -- more than cars, planes and all other forms of transportation put together.” • Methane is also 21 times more efficient at trapping heat within our atmosphere.

  12. The point I’m trying to make is that if we continue to use AFO’s we will produce more waste and pollutants than we know what to do with or can handle. A small family farm produces less waste and smaller amount amount of methane.

  13. Sources • How much methane does a cow make in a day?. July 12th 2007. Available at www.funtrivia.com • Etter, Lauren. Manure Raises a New Stink. 2010. Available at www.WSJ.com • Manure Management on Cropland: Farm environmental survey (FEMS) 2006. 2006. Available at www.agr.gc.ca • Horton, Jenifer. How Stuff Works 10 Wacky Forms of Alternative Energy. Available at www.howstuffworks.com • Daily Mail Reporter. VW Dung beetle. 2010. Available at www.dailymail.co.uk • What’s the Problem? Available at www.epa.gov. • Bailey, Sue. 2009. Tainted Meat. Toronto Star; Toronto.

More Related