by Isabella Isaacs-Thomas
To feed the world and then some, farms and pastures take up a lot of space — 40 percent of all land globally is used for agriculture — and inevitably take a significant toll on the environment.
Agricultural practices generated 10 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in 2019. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus — standard soil nutrients found in manure or chemical fertilizers — can leak from croplands into nearby waterways and eat up the oxygen in aquatic ecosystems, sometimes killing the creatures that call them home, and even making humans sick.
Meanwhile, as the costs of fertilizer, equipment and land itself rise, “farmers have to farm more and more acres” to make ends meet, said landscape ecologist Lisa Schulte Moore. As it becomes increasingly difficult for farm operations to be profitable enough to sustain people’s livelihoods, there are fewer and fewer active farms, according to the USDA’s Census of Agriculture, conducted every five years.
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Question
Use the passage to answer the question.
Based on the structure of this passage, which would most likely follow this section of text?
(1 point)
Responses
a comparison between aquatic and soil-based ecosystems
a comparison between aquatic and soil-based ecosystems
a solution to the problem of world hunger
a solution to the problem of world hunger
a comparison between conventional and organic farming techniques
a comparison between conventional and organic farming techniques
a solution to the problem of unsustainable agricultural practices
a solution to the problem of unsustainable agricultural practices
1 answer
Based on the structure of the passage, which discusses the environmental impacts of current agricultural practices and the challenges faced by farmers, the most likely follow-up section would be:
a solution to the problem of unsustainable agricultural practices
This option directly addresses the issues raised in the passage and indicates a logical progression towards finding ways to mitigate these problems.
