While insecticide and other pesticides , along with the advent of chemical fertilizer , has helped Farmer produce sufficient and even supernumerary crops , the environmental and health impact have been severe and are stay to grow . Sometimes these chemical substance are researched poorly ( if at all ) for their impact on human health or the environment . Sometimes misuse by the farmer or gardener leads to inadvertent harm . But the long - term impacts are ill understood until the chemical load builds up in homes and the surround .

Chemical Fertilizers

Chemical fertilizer were first manufactured big - ordered series during World War II as a better source of chemicals for explosives . Since then , chemical fertilizers have been used extensively to boost harvest and garden production . But overuse has led to runoff and leaching that enters salute water systems , poisons waterways and/or causes aquatic killing . Despite legion warnings about using the proper amount of fertilizer at the correct times , over 40 percent of US waterways are at least partially jeopardized by fertiliser , and tope water quality continues to deteriorate .

Insecticides

Even constitutive insecticides often come with health word of advice . Organic pesticides are plant - derive , but some are highly toxic . The reason they are considered safe than many chemical insecticide is that they go against down quicker . Many chemical insecticides , such as DDT , have been put on the grocery store in the United States and around the world with insufficient research to determine their prejudicious side - effects on humans and the environment .

Other Pesticides

According to the Environmental Protection Agency , the term ' pesticide ' refers not only to insecticide , but to any nub " intended for preventing , destroy , repel or extenuate any pest . " This let in mammals , fungi , bug and plants . As the EPA points out , " By their very nature , most pesticide make some risk of exposure of harm – pesticides can have hurt to humans , animals or the environment because they are designed to kill or otherwise adversely affect go organisms . "

Effects of Chemical Horticulture

In his investigating of the agricultural concatenation in the United States , Michael Pollan points out many of the side effects and price of a food system based on great chemical substance dependence . chemic fertilizers ask high heating plant and pressing to get , while all agricultural chemical demand plant , refineries , publicity and shipping . All of these have high dodo - fuel requirement . And killing all the germ , endemic plant life and animals in an country for a single case of crop has a tenacious chronicle of reducing the overall biological quality of the land .

Sustainable Practices and Permaculture

Sustainable practices rarely let in even organic fertilizers and pesticide . Permaculture trust on intensive design to circumvent farming problems or comprise them as part of the answer for another problem . For example , many weeds are rate for fixing atomic number 7 in the ground , which in tour acts as fertilizers . An copiousness of harmful dirt ball indicates poor industrial plant health , a disabling deficiency of plant diversity and an absence of natural predators . The whole region is re - designed to appropriate natural processes to do the work that humans otherwise have to do .

References

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