Agricultural Ethics

Abstract

Globally, agriculture is confronted with huge problems such as hunger, undernutrition (causing blindness and marasmus), and overnutrition such as obesity. Environmental factors including inequality of access to arable land, good food, and water are also pressing problems. Moreover, billions of animals suffer tremendously in intensive farming practices, and pollution of water, land, and air is normal in countries with an industrialized livestock production. Global warming is coproduced by agriculture, in particular livestock farming. Geopolitical powerful companies or countries take land from poor countries in their search for commodity agriculture (like biofuel crops) and threaten livelihoods of poor farmers. Intellectual property rights enhance unequal access to seeds and increase the gap between poor and rich farmers. These ethical problems presuppose notions of justice, human rights, dignity of people, and quality of food and livelihood. Intensive, scientific-driven agriculture is often at the root of problems of animal welfare and global warming, and agroecological types of agriculture often score much better on these issues. Starting with the Declaration of Human Rights formulating the right to adequate food, the entry discusses various ethical approaches to these global problems. It turns out that not only rights of people but also social requirements are necessary to improve our handling of these problems.