Intensive farming or intensive agriculture is an agricultural production system characterized by the high inputs of capital

Capital (economics)

In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...

, labour, or heavy usage of technologies such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers relative to land area.

This is in contrast to many sorts of sustainable agriculture

Sustainable agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is the practice of farming using principles of ecology, the study of relationships between organisms and their environment...

 such as organic farming

Organic farming

Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm...

 or extensive agriculture, which involve higher inputs of labor, and energy relative to the area of land farmed, but focus on maintaining the long-term ecological health of the farmland, also the product which is being produced is generally produced with fewer synthetic chemicals.

Modern day forms of intensive crop based agriculture involve the use of mechanical ploughing, chemical fertilizer

Fertilizer

Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...

s, plant growth regulators and/or pesticide

Pesticide

Pesticides are substances or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling or mitigating any pest.A pesticide may be a chemical unicycle, biological agent , antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest...

s.