The book I read to research this post was Environmental Science for Dummies by Spooner which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. I think this book would be of particular interest to anyone concerned about the environment or anyone doing a science course related to environmental science. There is a trend in a lot of countries towards genetically modified animals and plants. With plants they can make them more hardy, increase the crop output, make them disease resistant and a more recent development is they can make the crop more nutritious. In the UK where I live these GM crops are banned because we don't know whether they have any adverse affects on the human body. Another issue is if you grow GM crops and their pollen is spread they can change other plants genetically which is a bit worrying. With genetically modified animals they can increase the amount of food produced, make them more hardy and make them disease resistant. In africa for example they can have cattle that are more drought resistant.
Another issue is introducing plants and animals from one region or country to another. In spain for example they have introduced carp and european catfish to the rivers. This has resulted in carp and catfish eating everything in them rivers so that they can't sustain any native fish and in many cases there is very little vegetation.
A different issue is sustainable farming where farmers do things like crop rotation, planting fruit trees to help clump the soil together & partial tillage where soil is ploughed but only partly so there is less chance of it blowing away.
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