Laguna Lodge

More info on water consumption and pollution in meat production

To produce one pound of meat it takes 2500 gallons of water. The same amount of water could have been used to grow 50lbs of fruits and vegetables or 42lbs of grain. To produce a days food for one meat eater takes over 4,000 gallons, for a lacto ovo vegetarian 1,200 gallons, for a pure vegetarian 300 gallons. Enormous amounts of water are used to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock and to wash away the animals excrement. Water tables are dropping precipitously.

Manure and sewage from stockyards, chicken factories, and other feeding facilities pollute water supplies. Cow manure gets dumped into the water supply instead of being recycled as fertilizer; this pollutes waterways more than all other industries combined. Half of the grain and hay that is fed to beef cattle is grown on irrigated land. To produce a single pound of meat takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water as much as a typical family uses for all its combined household purposes in a month. It takes up to a hundred times more water to produce a pound of meat as it does to produce a pound of wheat.

Huge numbers of animals are concentrated in feedlots, confinement buildings, and other factory farm locations and waste is not returned to the soil to provide nutrients for next years crops. It usually ends up dumped in streams, rivers and lakes. Every 24 hours America’s animals destined for the dinner table produce 20 billion pounds of waste – 250,000 pounds of excrement a second. One cow produces as much waste as 16 humans and some feed lots have 100,000 cattle. Animal waste is high in nitrogen which when unreturned to the soil converts to ammonia, phosphates and nitrates. Water supplies are becoming increasingly high in nitrate levels which can cause brain damage and death to infants. The waterways suffer oxygen depletion and algae overgrowth and bacterial growth and as a result loss of fish and animal life. Animal wastes account for more than 10 times as much water pollution as the total amount attributable to the entire human population. The meat industry accounts for more than three times as much harmful waste water pollution as the rest of the nations industries combined.

 

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More info on Water Cycles

THE AVERAGE LIFE OF A WATER MOLECULE IN THE WATER CYCLE from the United Nations statistical commission.

Atmosphere - 9 days.
Rivers - 2 weeks.
Soil moisture - 2 weeks to 1 year.
Large lake - 10 years.
Underground water at shallow depth – 10’s to 100’s of years. Ocean water to a depth of 55 yards - 120 years.
Oceans - 3,000 to 5,000 years.
Underground water at depth - 10,000 to 100,000+ years.
Antarctic ice cap - 10,000 to 100,000+ years

Water covers 70% of the earths surface, of this 97% is sea water, 2 % is ice locked in glaciers, and less than half of the remaining 1% is available fresh water. This small amount is either in the atmosphere or available to us in surface or ground water. Surface water runoff drains from the highest land areas in the form of springs, streams and rivers, to lower areas, where it collects as lakes, and finally, to the ocean. Ground water is normally fresh water that percolates into the ground then is held in soil and rock formations known as aquifers. Approximately 85% of all water evaporation comes from the oceans. The remaining 15% comes from lakes, rivers, and wetlands. The water is then carried by the wind for varying distances, sometimes thousands of miles before it returns to the earth in the form of rain. Some of the water is used by plants in the process of photosynthesis and is quickly returned to the air, some rain runs off into the surface water systems of streams, rivers, and lakes and returns to the ocean. Some rain percolates through the soil to become groundwater which moves very slowly back to the surface or to the oceans, completing the cycle. The composition of water varies with the qualities of the air, soil, and rock it has traveled through and with the nature of the pollutants that have been introduced to it. An estimated two- thirds of all the fresh water on Earth is contained in the Amazon Basin alone, excluding water that is frozen in polar ice or trapped underground. This water constantly circulates in a hydrological cycle. The water that falls as rain is absorbed by soil and forest plants. Some water evaporates in the heat, while some is transpired-breathed- back into the atmosphere by the plants. The moisture reforms as clouds and returns again to the earth as rain. Deforestation significantly reduces rainfall and increases surface temperatures in the rain forests. The result is a general drying trend.

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More info on the United Nations Report and Tina Volpe on Al Gore

Cattle emissions more harmful to the planet than CO2 emissions from vehicles.
December 11, 2006 - 

A United Nations report has identified the world’s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world’s 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.

Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world’s emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.

Ranching, the report adds, is “the major driver of deforestation” worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.

Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.

The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating “dead zones” devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.

The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.

Meet the world’s top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.

A United Nations report has identified the world’s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world’s 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.

Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world’s emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.

Ranching, the report adds, is “the major driver of deforestation” worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.

Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.

The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating “dead zones” devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.

The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases. – UN Report, 2006 

TINA VOLPE SOBRE AL GORE

I applaud Al Gore for shaking this country to the core and creating such an educational and jolting film. However, whether it be political, or just plain ol’ family history (The Gore family are cattle ranchers) Al Gore failed us terribly. He neglected to tell us the whole truth. Global warming poses one of the most serious threats to the global environment ever faced in human history. But he conveniently decided NOT to mention one of the main culprits behind the global warming we see today. Factory Farming: huge agribusiness's raising animals for food. The most effective and immediate strategies for reducing global warming in our lifetimes: advocating a vegetarian diet.

Kicking the meat habit is a required choice for anyone who cares about the environment. More than one million animals are raised and killed every hour to supply Americans with flesh. This process destroys the environment... accelerating global warming and polluting the air, soil and our water. Meat production also drains scarce land, water, and mineral resources. Every meal you eat provides an opportunity to help or hurt the environment and to set an example for others.

Global warming threatens planetary survival through destruction of wildlife habitats, flooding of coastal communities, and extreme weather conditions. Melting glaciers deny habitats to polar bears and seals. The resulting rise in ocean levels will flood low-lying coastal communities like New York and New Orleans. Warming of ocean waters intensifies hurricanes and droughts that cause extensive property damage and destroy soil productivity.

Global warming is brought on by emission of so-called “greenhouse gases,” primarily carbon dioxide and the much more potent methane and nitrous oxide. These gases trap the sun’s heat in our atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect.

Most of us, as well as Gore, blame automotive and industrial emissions for global warming, and rightly so. But animal agriculture is a major culprit as well. It contributes carbon dioxide from burning forest land to create animal pastures and from combustion of fossil fuels to operate farm machinery, factory farms, animal transport vehicles, and slaughterhouses. It contributes methane from the digestive tracts of cattle and nitrous oxide from animal waste cesspools.

According to a recent study by University of Chicago professors Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, a vegetarian diet uses less fossil fuel and is therefore more energy efficient and less polluting than the “mean American diet,” a mixture of plant and animal foods. They found that adopting a vegetarian diet reduces greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year - as much as switching from an SUV to a compact.

The food that people eat is just as important as what kind of cars they drive when it comes to creating the greenhouse-gas emissions that many scientists have linked to global warming, according to a report published in the April issue of the Journal Earth Interactions.

Both the burning of fossil fuels during food production and non-carbon dioxide emissions associated with livestock and animal waste contribute to the problem, the University’s Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin wrote in the report.

The average American diet requires the production of an extra ton and a half of carbon dioxide-equivalent, in the form of actual carbon dioxide as well as methane and other greenhouse gases compared to a strictly vegetarian diet. Cutting down on just a few eggs or hamburgers each week is an easy way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, they said.

“We neither make a value judgment, nor do we make a categorical statement,” said Eshel, an Assistant Professor in Geophysical Sciences and the College. “We say that however close you can be to a vegan diet and further from the mean American diet, the better you are for the planet. It doesn’t have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan. If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you’ve already made a substantial difference.”

The average American drives 8,322 miles by car annually, emitting 1.9 to 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide, depending on the vehicle model and fuel efficiency. Meanwhile, Americans also consume an average of 3,774 calories of food each day.

In 2002, energy used for food production accounted for 17 percent of all fossil fuel used in the United States. And the burning of these fossil fuels emitted three-quarters of a ton of carbon dioxide per person. That alone amounts to approximately one-third the average greenhouse-gas emissions of personal transportation. But livestock production and associated animal waste also emit greenhouse gases not associated with fossil-fuel combustion, primarily methane and nitrous oxide.

“An example would be manure lagoons that are associated with large-scale pork production,” Eshel said. “Those emit a lot of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.”

While methane and nitrous oxide are relatively rare compared with carbon dioxide, they are—molecule for molecule—far more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. A single pound of methane, for example, has the same greenhouse effect as approximately 25 pounds of carbon dioxide.

We must not only avert this crisis by changing our diets to avoid consuming all animal products altogether, but consider the consequences of mass producing animals on our world. The insanity of over a billion people, or 1 in 6 people going hungry is so barbaric when we think about how much of our food grown goes to feeding animals. 40% of food grown in the world goes to feed livestock. - Tina Volpe

 

Laguna Lodge

More info on uneconomical use of land in animal farming

For every 16lbs of grain and soy beans fed to beef cattle 1lb of meat is produced. The other 15lbs is turned mainly into manure. 18% of the energy value of what an animal consumes is recovered for human consumption in milk, and only 4% is recovered in beef. United States Department of Agriculture. Developing nations are copying meat associating it with the economic status of developed nations. To supply one person with meat for a year requires three and a quarter acres, a lacto-ovo vegetarian a half acre and a pure vegetarian a sixth of an acre. One acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes the same acre used to grow cattle feed can produce less than 165 pounds of beef. In Guatemala 75% of the children under five are undernourished while yearly Guatemala exports 40 million pounds of meat to the United States. A 1978 study sponsored by the Departments of Interior and Commerce produced figures showing that the value of raw materials consumed to produce food from livestock is greater than the value of all the oil, gas, and coal consumed in America. Growing grains, vegetables and fruit uses less than 5% the raw material consumption as meat. Animals are taken away from their mothers and put on concrete or metal floors so the sheds need to be heated which uses energy and more is needed to bring in feed and then move wastes away.

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More info on Health Impacts of Meat Consumption

A diet rich in fruits and vegetables plays a role in reducing the risk of all the major causes of illness and death-Walter Willet-Harvard School of public health.

DRUGS - Growth hormones are used to produce plump animals at record speed, while antibiotics and other drugs control diseases that run rampant in overcrowded factory farms. Drug-resistant bacteria are appearing more frequently. These drugs are ingested by humans when eating flesh and have only been tested on animals for veterinary use.

HEART - Studies of eating habits around the world have confirmed the link between saturated fat and heart disease. Switching to a low-fat vegetarian diet can halt or even reverse artery damage. People who limit meat, eggs and dairy products to between 3% and 10% of the calories in their diet have very little heart disease.

COLON - Meat is a primary factor in colon cancer. Due to our long intestinal tract meat spoils in the heat of our bodies and toxins circulate back into the blood stream. This sets up an acidic intestinal environment, (the healthful state of the body is alkaline) upsets the reign of good bacteria and allows the overgrowth of bad bacteria, which give of cancer causing toxins. Organic fruit, vegetables and whole grains high in fiber and nutrients protect us from cancer.

CANCER – Meat eaters have higher rates of cancer than vegetarians.  People who eat the lowest amounts of animal fats have the lowest rates of cancer, especially when they also eat green and yellow vegetables. These vegetables have fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals (plant chemicals) that protect us from disease. There is strong evidence that fruit and vegetables are protective elements for all gastrointestinal cancers and all smoking related cancers.

OSTEOPOROSIS - This bone weakening disease is caused by to much protein. Meat and dairy proteins cause the blood to become acidic, the blood tries to return to its alkaline state by withdrawing calcium from the bones. The kidneys also rob the bones in order to eliminate the excess nitrogen found in animal protein. Magnesium, zinc and iron is also lost. Meat, eggs, and fish are the most acid forming of foods. Most fruits and vegetables are alkaline so require no depletion of calcium stores from the bones to maintain the neutrality of the blood. The foods whose calcium is best utilized are those with the highest calcium/phosphorous ratios, such as green leafy vegetables. The calcium found in these foods is dramatically more available than that found in animal products.

KIDNEY STONES – The calcium lost from the bones due to excess protein has to be taken out of the blood stream via the kidney system, it crystallizes into kidney stones. Additionally there is mounting evidence implicating excessive protein consumption in the destruction of kidney tissue and the progressive deterioration in kidney function.

High amount of calcium that has not been absorbed due to high phosphorous/calcium ratios.

PARASITES - Parasites such as Trichina and E.Coli and disease from animals such as Mad Cow Disease can be introduced to humans by eating animal flesh.

THE PROTEIN MYTH - Because of proteins importance to us nature made it easy to get enough. Many people still believe that vegetarians have to create elaborate plant food combinations to get the equivalent of a steak. Pairings like beans and rice do provide complementary proteins but research has shown that in a varied nutritious diet all nine essential amino acids are provided to make complete proteins from day to day. Meat contains about the same amounts of usable protein as cheese, soybean, brown rice, oats, sunflower seed, and cashew nuts. While eggs and milk have the most protein. There is also protein in broccoli and green leafy vegetables.

No absolute physiological need exists for meat, since the protein of it can be replaced by other proteins of vegetable origin, as well as animal proteins in milk, cheese and egg.  Early experiments which found that rats grew faster when fed animal protein led to the hypothesis that animal protein was superior. Later it was found that rats fed animal protein diets also died earlier and suffered multitudes of diseases vegetarian rats do not. A stong correlation exists between dietary protein intake and cancer of the breast, prostrate, pancreas, and colon.

 

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More info on Chemical use in Farming

90% to 95% of all pesticide residues are found at the top the food chain in meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products. In today’s factory farm livestock often feed on heavily contaminated grain, fish meal, and grass. These toxins, as well as other toxins from the environment, concentrate in the fatty tissue and skin of animals. Short term toxicity tests on small animals tell us little about the long term risks to humans. DDT was passed as safe only to be withdrawn due to overwhelming evidence of its links to cancer. Third world countries receive pesticides from America that have been banned there. In America 18 billion pounds of new pollutants and chemicals are released by industry into the atmosphere, soil, and ground water. Over 70,000 different chemicals compounds are now in use by industry, agriculture and private citizens; 5,000 new and unproved chemical compounds are being introduced into the environment every year. At least 700 of these have been regularly found in the drinking water but the EPA has set safety standards for only 60 of them.

Pesticides are poisons. They penetrate by the process of osmosis into the sap of a tree, into the stalk and leaf of the plant, and finally into the fruit and vegetable. These poisons enter the human system when the fruit or vegetable is eaten, in minute quantities they are inside and cannot be washed off.

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More info on deforestation and global warming caused by cattle ranching

Everyday, great amounts of water evaporate from the trees, creating the clouds. The clouds reflect sunlight keeping the Earth's surface nice and fresh.  By cutting down the forests we increase the concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) while decreasing the protection from the clouds. The decomposition or burning that occurs in fallen forests contributes 30% of all the carbon dioxide that humans add to the atmosphere, as well as unknown quantities of methane and nitrose oxide. These chemicals absorb the heat of the Sun and cause a generalized heating of the atmosphere.  This process, named  greenhouse effect, in its natural form keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life. In the last 100 years the gases emitted by human activities have incremented this greenhouse effect. The forest areas absorb the energy, especially the green and dense tropical forests. A great wind rise follows the line of the forests of the equator, due in fact to the heat absorbed by the tropical forests. This great equatorial rise helps the circulation patterns of the atmosphere in all the globe.  Deforestation interrupts this process, altering the wind and rain patterns of the world.  The consequences of global warming are changing the patterns of global climate, raising the sea levels, increasing the intensity of storms, altering the climate patterns and the elimination of forests. To reduce the levels of deforestation we must face the causes that lie beneath, like demographic growth, poverty, foreign debt and multilateral help policies.

Currently more than half of the tropical forests of the Earth have been burnt, crushed or eliminates. The rest is being erased at a speed of 35.2 million acres per year (55,000 square miles). These are 67 acres per minute, a football field per second. Of the 8 million acres that circulated the Earth's equator, only 3.4 exist today. Tropical deforestation eliminates 17 species of plants and animals per year, 2 every hour - species that don't exist anywhere else. Approximately 48 species become extinct every day, 2 every hour. All of the Earth's species are governed by a complex network of interdependencies. Each time a species is removed, the foundation of life is weakened. We don't know how many species can be removed until the global ecosystem collapses, how many more trees can be cut down before global warming becomes irreversible, causing generalized draught, sea levels raise and other disastrous environmental changes.

For every hamburger consumed, 55 square feet of rain forest are destroyed; 660 pounds of living matter, from 20 to 30 different species of plants, 100 species of insects and dozens of birds, mammals and reptiles are also destroyed.

Cattle farming is the main cause of destruction of the rainforest in Central and South America. Since 1960, more than 25% of the Central American forests have been cut down to become pastures. The meat produces is exported and used in fast food chains in North American and Europe. Guatemala now only has more than half of its original forests.

The 1.3 billion flatulent cattle constitute a very important cause of global warming. Each day they release tons of methane to the atmosphere as part of their digestion. 30 million tons of methane come from ponds and mountains of manure.

It requires much more energy produced by fossil fuels to transport meat, than to transport the equivalent protein value from vegetable sources. In addition, much of the deforestation around the world comes from cleaning burning the forest to use the land as pastures. This causes further damage because the trees that would otherwise absorb carbon dioxide are being destroyed. Fruits, vegetables and grains, on the other hand, require 95% less raw materials to produce and when combined they can provide a complete and nutritious diet.

The Central American rain forests are being destroyed to provide cheap hamburger meat. In 1960 when the United States started importing meat Central America had 130,000 square miles of unexplored jungle. By 1985 there were less than 80,000 left. Representing 30% of the forests in the world, tropical forests house 80% of all the vegetable land species and contribute substantially to the provision of oxygen. These forests are the oldest ecosystems in the planet and have developed an enormous wealth. Half of all the species in the world live in the tropical forest. They are being destroyed rapidly to provide land for pastures and feed growing for cattle and the American fast food industry. In 1985, 100,000 of meat were imported from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama. Most of it is destined to the hamburgers of fast food chains. With this destruction there is an increment in floods and firewood becomes scarce.  The land doesn't have time to recover from the loss of top soil and it erodes. The native tribes of the rain forest are disappearing as a result of the destruction of their environment. The ongoing destruction of the rain forests place the existence of animals, birds, plants and peoples at risk, as their natural habitat is being rapidly exterminated.

"Our numbers have increased so, and our technologies have become so powerful that we now are capable of having a significant influence in many parts of the Earth's environment. The most vulnerable part of the Earth's ecosystem is the atmosphere. It's very vulnerable because its very thin. My friend, who passed away, Carl Sagan used to say "If you have a balloon covered with a hand of varnish, the thickness of that varnish is proportional to that of the atmosphere in relation to the Earth. In fact, the Earth's atmosphere is so thin that we have the ability to alter dramatically the concentration of its basic molecular components. In particular we have incremented considerably the amounts of carbon dioxide, the most important of the greenhouse gases"  Al Gore, ex Vice-President of the United States.

Laguna Lodge

More info on Cattle Ranching and Loss of Top Soil

It takes 100 to 500 years to build one inch of top soil. We are currently loosing one inch every 16 years. With 85% to 90% of the loss linked directly to livestock agriculture. In deforested areas an inch of top soil can wash away in a heavy storm. Rivers swell with muddy sediments after rains and shrink during dry spells. Flooding and droughts prevail, and soil erosion accelerates. 

The sustenance of all animal life comes, ultimately, from the vegetable kingdom. Only the plant world can change inert chemical compounds into living matter. The roots of the trees going down deep into the sub-soil and those of plants feeding upon the top soil, draw up those substances which together with the action of sunlight, air and water they transform into nutriment for man. The plant world likewise sustains all the carnivorous animals, for these feed upon those other creatures which have drawn their nutriment from grasses and other vegetation. Nutrition then can be said to begin in the soil. Soil is the foundation of the whole of life upon the planet, and that upon the health of the soil, the health of humanity depends. Each soil differs from another according to its mineral content and similarly every fruit and vegetable varies from others according to the content of the earth upon which each was grown. The mineral content in products from the soil can only come from the soil in which the plants were grown. No plant or animal can appropriate to itself any mineral that was not first present in the soil upon which it feeds. Top soil is dark nutrient rich soil that holds moisture and feeds us by feeding plants. It is the most basic foundation of our sustenance upon earth. In the United States two hundred years ago top soil was at least 21 inches thick, today it is down to six inches with 75% loss of this precious natural resource. The decline in the soils fertility has been masked by saturation it with ever increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. 20 million tons of chemical fertilizers are applied to American farmlands each year.

FERTILIZERS - Highly concentrated artificial fertilizers kill the bacterial life of the soil, they also kill or chase away earth worms who aerate the top soil and whose humus is invaluable for the plants nourishment. When plants are forced into quick development, they are not able to draw the normal amount of minerals from the soil and they fail to properly transform their starches and acids into their normal plant sugars. Their nutritive value is impaired, they are less easily digested and they have less taste. Nitrogen fertilizers are contributing to the destruction of the earth’s ozone layer. 

 

 

Laguna Lodge

More info on species extintion

The earth is approximately three and a half billion years old. There are estimated to be between three million and 10 million species alive today, yet well over 99% of all the species that ever lived are now extinct. In the times of most rapid extinction it is estimated that the rate was about one species lost every thousand years, while humans have caused the extinction of up to one million species in the last quarter of this century alone. According to Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson some 27,000 plant, animal, and insect species become extinct every year, the vast majority being insects. Approximately 24% or 1,130 mammals and 12% or 1,183 bird species are currently regarded as globally threatened. Most species extinction can be traced to human encroachments on habitat resulting from population growth and economic development. Human activities have destroyed 11% of the globes arable land, the size of China and India combined, and over 40% is now degraded in some way.