Foundation paper 2.5 Importance of plants and animals 1. Know the value of plants and animals to society 2. Know the relationship between environmental factors, plants, animals and humans 3. Know the meaning of biodiversity 4. Be able to determine how ELBS businesses use plants and animals to benefit society The Foundation paper lasts an hour and will have around five questions. Look through your written assignment on the Importance of plants and animals and think about your visits to Jim's Farm. You can also take the virtual farm walk from the LEAF website to remind yourself how farming links together the plants and animals and cares for the environment. The button for this is on the right above.
Importance of plants to society
Why are plants important to us? It is easy to think of this because we can hardly imagine life without plants! There would be no oxygen without plants and no food either! All food chains have to start with a plant because only plants can carry out photosynthesis! Plants are called "producers" in a food chain. Even ocean food chains, must start with a plant like seaweed or tiny phytoplankton or algae.
So plants provide food for us (and think of all those delicious veggies and fruits, not to mention our staple crops like wheat, oats, rice or potatoes). But plants also provide food for the animals we eat like cows and sheep. These animals are the second links in food chains and could not exist without plants. We use many other animal products like milk, cheese, wool, leather or feathers.
Plants also provide us with fuel from charcoal to bio-diesel and fibres for cloth or paper, floor coverings like mats or to make baskets and rope. We use many plants for buildings and furniture or tools. Also our societies often use plants for medicine, dyes and cosmetics too. We enjoy plants as beautiful to look at or for their perfume. Plants contribute to our recreation time as parks, nature reserves, sports grounds and gardens so helping leisure activities to keep us healthy. Plants can help us to clean up areas which have been damaged by pollution because some plants can survive in very polluted soils and they absorb the harmful elements. If you then harvest the plants, you can remove the harmful pollutants sometimes by burning the plant and refining the ash left to isolate the harmful elements. This process can be adapted to mine for certain elements like copper.
This food chain starts with grass as the producer. A grasshopper is the primary consumer, then a mouse is the secondary consumer, followed by snake then hawk as the top predator. Once the hawk dies, its nutrients will be used by the mushrooms which are decomposers. Many food chains have people as a top consumer as we farm animals to feed us.
biodiversity
What is biodiversity? Biodiversity is the word used to describe the variety of life on Earth. It refers to the wide range of plants and animals, and also the places where they live, called ‘habitats’. Why is biodiversity important? People depend on biodiversity in many ways. For example, biodiversity provides us with a wide range of raw materials for food, building, medicine, and much more. The benefits that we gain from biodiversity, however, go far beyond the mere provision of raw materials. Biodiversity provides a variety of essential services known as ‘ecosystem services’. These include crop pollination, pest control, and flood storage. The security of our food and energy strongly depends on biodiversity. It is essential that we protect and enhance biodiversity in order to sustain our mental and physical health as well as our material wealth.
This site gives you many suggestions of how you could act to increase biodiversity.
Using plants in society
Vertical Garden - plants to keep us healthy in a city!
This is a new idea to help use spaces in a city. Instead of using the land for parks and gardens, here the garden has been created from a wall. This saves space but still lets people see a range of plants for their pleasure. Also plants release oxygen to help us all breathe!
environmental stewardship
Environmental Stewardship is an agri-environment scheme that provides funding to farmers and other land managers in England to deliver effective environmental management on your land. There are four levels working together:
Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) provides a straightforward approach to supporting the good stewardship of the countryside. This is done through simple and effective land management that goes beyond the Single Payment Scheme requirement to maintain land in good agricultural and environmental condition. It is open to all farmers and landowners.
Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS) is the organic strand of ELS. It is geared to organic and organic/conventional mixed farming systems and is open to all farmers not receiving Organic Farming Scheme aid.
Uplands Entry Level Stewardship (Uplands ELS) was launched in February 2010 to support hill farmers with payments for environmental management. This strand of Environmental Stewardship succeeds the Hill Farm Allowance. It is open to all farmers with land in Severely Disadvantaged Areas, regardless of the size of the holding.
Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) involves more complex types of management and agreements are tailored to local circumstances. HLS applications will be assessed against specific local targets and agreements will be offered where they meet these targets and represent good value for money.