MODERN agriculture is set to become as bad for the planet's
health as global warming, a team of leading environmental
scientists has warned. They list rainforest destruction,
nitrogen pollution and the spread of diseases such as foot and
mouth and BSE among the growing threats from agriculture. "The
environmental effects of agriculture are on a trajectory soon to
rival those of climate change," says David Tilman, an ecologist
at the University of Minnesota. Tilman and nine other ecologists
in the US forecast that over the next 50 years growing
populations and an increasing demand for meat will mean the
world needs new farmland covering an area the size of the US.
Meeting this demand will probably see the destruction of "the
vast majority of the rainforests and savannah grasslands in
Latin America and central Africa, which harbour a large portion
of the Earth's biological diversity", Tilman told New Scientist.
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