Tractor plowing a wheat field


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Figure 2.2.2. Modern industrial agriculture is a culmination of social and technological processes beginning in the 1800s that sought to increase yields of agriculture for growing human populations by applying fossil fuel energy, mechanization, and advanced crop breeding methods. This photo of a modern grain variety being harvested encapsulates this transformation towards modern agriculture in many ways: the large area of a single grain variety, likely bred and sold by a modern corporation; the extreme mechanical efficiency and speed of grain flowing off the field into a wagon for storage and sales; the need for diesel fuel and associated carbon dioxide emissions to drive the powerful machinery, whose power and efficiency reduces the workforce needed for agriculture.
Originally uploaded in Integrate:Teaching for Sustainability:InTeGrate Modules:Future of Food:Student Materials.

Image 173976 is a 525 by 700 pixel WebP
Uploaded: Jan3 18


Last Modified: 2018-01-03 11:27:00
Permanent URL: https://serc.carleton.edu/download/images/173976/tractor_plowing_wheat_field.webp

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Credit: Alan Harrison, used with permission from Flickr under a creative commons license
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