A letter about growing tomotoes in greenhouses and pesticides

Essay by joelpatJunior High, 7th gradeB+, October 2014

download word file, 1 pages 0.0

Downloaded 3 times

Dear farmer Hillbilly,

I understand you are having trouble growing your tomatoes so I am writing to give you some tips on how to get the best results from your tomato plants.

One Method you could consider is intensive farming. Intensive farming methods include growing high-yield crops and using fertilisers and pesticides.

Food production can be increased by growing high-yield crops, removing other plants and pests and adding fertiliser to the soil.

For best results in growing tomatoes, you could use these intensive farming methods.

Remove competing plants from the crop growing area can be done by using herbicide spray. This method allows more energy to be transferred to the crop, however it could reduce biodiversity.

You could also remove animals that feed on the crop using pesticides. This prevents energy being transferred from the crop to consumers, however using pesticides could reduce biodiversity and may poison helpful organisms.

Biological control is an alternative to using pesticides. By releasing a natural predator into the tomato growing area, the number of pests can be reduced. This can have bad affects as the numbers of different organisms in the food web are changed. Sometimes the predator can become a more serious pest than the original problem.

Tomatoes can also be grown in greenhouses to increase productivity. The benefits of this method are that the growing conditions can be monitored and controlled to improve productivity.

An extreme form of growing tomatoes in greenhouses is called hydroponics. Soil is replaced by a mineral solution pumped around the plant roots.

Removing the soil removes soil organisms which can cause disease. Monitoring and adjusting the concentrations of minerals in the solution enable you to control growth. It allows your tomatoes to be grown in regions where there's no soil.

You should think carefully before using...