Chapter 65
Agriculture Ethics
Agriculture ethics is a branch of applied ethics that deals with a wide range of issues related to the farming of food, ranching and processing livestock, and the cultivation of crops for fiber, fuel and other products. The history of agriculture is inseparably linked to human history and the history of technology. It is widely believed that technological developments related to animal domestication, irrigation and storage once enabled farmers to establish permanent settlements. Stable communities were then able to develop measuring techniques, construction technologies, legal systems and other technologies and social practices necessary for permanent large-scale civilizations.
In the twentieth century, the methods and machinery of industrialization were applied to agriculture culminating in the “Green Revolution,” a mid-to-late-century period of great increases in productivity in both the industrialized and the developing worlds. The Green Revolution brought great social and environmental changes and raised new moral questions in agriculture ethics related to appropriate use of the land, environmental harms, hunger and trade policy, agricultural biotechnology, and the ethical treatment of animals.
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