Unit 2 - Science for the Needs of Society: Section 11.3

Countryside and Environmental Management

Agriculture is concerned mainly with the production of food.
Agriculture scientists work to improve both the quality and the quantity of food produced. They devise farming techniques to increase crop production.

Environmental scientists seek to maintain a balance between the damage the extraction of these materials may cause and maintaining an environment in which we can all live and thrive comfortably.

Agricultural scientists study how plants grow, determining which nutrients plants need and experimenting with selective breeding. This process can lead to higher crop yield. Two contrasting approaches to farming are intensive farming and organic farming.

You need to be able to:

• Describe how intensive farming increases crop yields by using artificial fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, and increases meat production by using controlled environments
• Describe how organic farming uses the alternative methods of natural fertilisers, natural pesticides and mechanical methods of eliminating weeds in crop production and keeps animals under more natural conditions

In addition to food, we also obtain cotton, dyes, wool and leather from living things. Microorganisms also play an important part in the production of some foods (e.g. yoghurt, cheese, bread, beer, wine) and medicines such as penicillin.

You need to be able to:

• Describe the use of bacteria, yeast and other fungi in food and medicine production (bread, beer, wine, cheese, yoghurt) and antibiotics (e.g. penicillin)

Selective breeding and genetic engineering

Agricultural scientists have developed new methods of producing plants and animals with favourable characteristics. Both crops and livestock have been bred so that they produce more food or are more economical to harvest.

You need to be able to:

• Explain that selective breeding involves selecting the parents with desired traits, crossing them, selecting from their offspring, and then repeating the process over several generations
• Explain that genetic engineering involves the transfer of ‘Foreign’ genes into the cells of animals or plants at an early stage in their development so that they develop with desired characteristics

You should be able to assess the applications and implications of science when

• Making informed judgements about the economic, social and ethical issues concerning cloning and genetic engineering and suggest possible long-term evolutionary problems, e.g. seedless fruits