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Intensive farming aims to maximize yield through techniques like multiple crop growth and mechanization. Sustainable methods include intercropping and bio-intensive agriculture. Commercial agriculture is problematic due to soil depletion and pollution, but is used to meet consumer demand for cheap products.
Intensive farming or intensive farming is an approach to agriculture in which the goal is to obtain as high a yield as possible. While all agriculture theoretically focuses on obtaining a high yield, this approach uses techniques geared towards maximizing things like the amount of crops that can be grown on the land, the number of growing cycles per year, and so on. This method is sometimes confused with commercial farming; indeed, commercial agriculture is one form, but it is far from the only approach to intensive agriculture.
Evidence of intensive agricultural practices can be found in cultures that date back thousands of years. In the Mediterranean, for example, early cultures raised different species of crustaceans, creating a population concentrated in a small area and using it as a source of food and textile dyes. In Southeast Asia, paddy cultivation is also an ancient practice. Terracing, in which unusable land is made usable by building terraces, also occurs in parts of Asia and South America.
Other sustainable intensive agriculture techniques include practices such as intercropping, where multiple crops are grown in the same field, and bio-intensive agriculture. On a smaller scale, French intensive gardening is used by some people to increase home garden yields by expanding the amount of available arable land. All of these methods can work with the environment to increase yields in a way that can be sustained over a long period of time, thousands of years in some cases.
In commercial agriculture, intensive farming practices include packing crops or animals as tightly as possible onto lots, along with the use of chemicals designed to stimulate rapid growth, increase size, reduce disease, and manage agricultural pests such as insects, fungi and animals. This system also relies heavily on mechanization, with large areas of land being worked on by machines.
Commercial agriculture is a problematic form of intensive agriculture because it cannot be sustained. The practices tend to deplete the soil of nutrients, can contribute to topsoil loss, generate nutrient pollution and cause other problems. The methods involved are so cheap, however, that companies are willing to take the risk of these problems to supply cheap food and products like plant-based textiles. Consumer demand determines the prices of agricultural products, and many consumers expect prices so low that the only way to realistically meet them is through industrialized agricultural practices.
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