Blog 3

Dear United States Department of Agriculture,

Most of the ethics now a days that farmers use are not good for the environment. Your industry is responsible for a little over one third of the green house gas emissions. These green house gas emissions are putting holes into the Earths ozone and also melting the ice in the poles. Each individual cow emits 30 to 50 gallons of methane a day through their stomach gas. Another thing that is effecting the environment is the over use of pesticides on crops. Chronic diseases are brought up from crops because they are essentially poisonous to keep the pests away so there is no way that it can be doing anything good for the environment or humans. Another point about farmers doing damage to the environment is deforestation. In the United states 260 million acres of land has been deforested to make room for crops. This is astronomical because trees are an essential part of our environment because trees can take CO2 and convert it into oxygen so trees are taking pollutants out of the air and turning it into oxygen so we can breath better. The next thing is water pollution. Agriculture uses around 70 percent of the earths clean water. Farmers are not using water effectively. One technique that farmers use is flooding their crops. This technique uses millions of gallons of water that doesn't all have to be used. Also all the huge tractors and other farming vehicles use fossil fuels that emit a ton of pollutants. This is first off wasting natural gasses and destroying the Earths surface from all the wear and tear that they do. The last issue is food waste. Farms all across America have a standard for their foods that they produce so if a product is not up to the farmers standards by physical appearance but is still completely healthy they will toss it because they do not believe it will sell. I believe that they should at least be donated rather than just thrown away. I hope that this letter can influence the people of your department a little bit.

Thank you, John Leland