what is sustainability in agriculture

What Makes Agriculture Sustainable?

• Adopting Agroforestry Practices. …
• Applying Integrated Pest Management (IPM) IPM is a collection of tactics for pest control that rejects the use of chemical pesticides, instead focusing on natural methods of control and prevention.
• Integrating Livestock and Crops. …
• Managing Whole Systems and Landscapes. …
• Planting Cover Crops. …
• Reducing Tillage. …

More items…

Full
Answer

What are cons of sustainable agriculture?

 · The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society’s food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Practitioners of sustainable agriculture seek to integrate three main objectives into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity.

What are the features of sustainable agriculture?

“The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society’s food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Practitioners of sustainable agriculture seek to integrate three main objectives into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity.”

What are the benefits of sustainable farming?

 · What Is Sustainable Agriculture? According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, sustainable agriculture is intended to protect the environment, maintain soil fertility, and even expand the natural resource base of the earth. The three main goals of sustainable agriculture are economic profitability for farmers; …

What are some examples of sustainable farming practices?

Sustainable agriculture is an alternative way to grow food that can be sustained for a long time. For example, sustainable farms use crop rotation techniques and organic fertilizers to maintain healthy soil and battle climate change. A lot of discussions about sustainable agriculture focus on how much water is used in farming systems.

What is meant by sustainability in agriculture?

Sustainable agriculture can be defined in many ways, but ultimately it seeks to sustain farmers, resources and communities by promoting farming practices and methods that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities. Sustainable agriculture fits into and complements modern agriculture.

Why is sustainability important to agriculture?

In addition to preserving the earth’s natural resources, sustainable agriculture benefits the environment through helping maintain soil quality, reducing erosion, and preserving water.

How can agriculture improve sustainability?

Practical measures include:Improved EBI and extending the grazing season.Substituting clover for chemical fertiliser.Changing to protected urea.Reducing losses from slurry.Improved energy efficiency and renewable energy.Incorporating forestry and hedgerows on farm.Using the ASSAP advisors to help improve water quality.

What are some examples of sustainable agriculture?

Sustainable Agriculture ExamplesCompanion Planting.Cover Crops.Crop Rotation.Fertility from Animals.Hydroponic Production.Season Extension.Strip Grazing.

What is the relationship between agriculture and sustainability?

Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. Agriculture contributes directly to sustainable stewardship of the land, air and water. Sustainability creates and maintains …

Why is sustainable agriculture important?

Sustainable agriculture is important to making sure that we have and will continue to have, the water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment.

How does sustainable food management work?

Through the sustainable management of food, we can help businesses and consumers save money, provide a bridge in our communities for those who do not have enough to eat, and conserve resources for future generations. Building on the familiar concept of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” this approach shifts the view on environmental protection and more fully recognizes the impacts of the food we waste.

Why is sustainability important?

Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the food, feed, and fiber needs of our country and the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations. Sustainable agriculture is important to making sure that we have …

What is the purpose of EPA?

EPA works to promote innovation and highlight the value and efficient management of food as a resource. Through the sustainable management of food, we can help businesses and consumers save money, provide a bridge in our communities for those who do not have enough to eat, and conserve resources for future generations.

What is sustainable agriculture?

Definitions differ, but at its heart, sustainable agriculture is about meeting the needs of the present, without sacrificing those of tomorrow—it’s farming that is environmentally sound, socially responsible, and profitable for farmers. Sustainable agriculture strives for the best long-term outcomes for forests, climate stability, human rights, and livelihoods.

How will agriculture affect the future of the world?

With a population projected to reach a staggering 9.8 billion by 2050, farmers will have to produce more food than ever before. Unfortunately, conventional farming methods degrade land, which actually reduces crop productivity over time—and that can prompt smallholder farmers to cut down nearby forests in search of new fertile earth. While clearing trees on a few acres of land may not cause the massive greenhouse emissions that accelerate climate change—that dubious honor goes to industrial farming for mega crops like soy and palm oil—it’s a tack that smallholders can’t sustain. If we’re to meet the needs of a ballooning population—and allow smallholder farmers to support their families—farmers of all kinds must adopt more sustainable agriculture methods.

How much of tropical deforestation is caused by agriculture?

Did you know that agriculture is responsible for 80 percent of tropical deforestation? The more we raze forests, the more we accelerate climate change. That’s terrible news for all of us, not least of all smallholder farmers, whose crops can be wiped out by droughts, floods, and pests and diseases. Avoiding deforestation is a crucial step in making agriculture more sustainable.

How can businesses help farmers?

Companies can help farmers with the upfront costs of adopting sustainable practices and pay more for crops that have been produced more sustainably.

What is the importance of soil for farmers?

What could be more essential for farmers than healthy soil? The healthier the soil, the better it retains moisture, which can help plants survive drought. Healthy soil also leads to higher crop yields, thereby reducing the economic desperation that drives farmers to clear forests in search of fertile earth. Organic composting enriches soil and reduces the need for expensive chemical fertilizers, which also pollute waterways. In addition, rotating different types of cover crops—plants grown in the off-season to prevent soil erosion—can also greatly bolster soil quality. Another bonus: Cover crops can store half a ton of CO2 per acre, making crop rotation a powerful natural climate solution.

How does gender equality affect agriculture?

Given that women make up more than 40 percent of the agricultural labor force in low income countries, gender equality is critical to a healthy, liveable future.

Is farming sustainable?

Farming can only be called sustainable if farmers can support their families. Fortunately, many of the approaches to improving farmer incomes improve the health of the Earth, too. Managing pests and weeds naturally, for example, reduces the need for harmful pesticides, thereby lowering costs. Planting fruit trees on farms can give farmers another product to sell, store carbon, and nourish soils.

What is sustainable agriculture?

Sustainable agriculture serves as a much-needed alternative to the industrial farming practices that have been employed in the United States for decades. These methods, which include repeatedly planting the same crop on one plot of land and encouraging growth through the heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers, …

What are the three main goals of sustainable agriculture?

The three main goals of sustainable agriculture are economic profitability for farmers; the promotion of environmental stewardship; and an increase in welfare for farmers, their communities, and their animals while producing enough to meet the needs of humans.

Why are antibiotics not used in agriculture?

Antibiotic Resistance: Because antibiotics are not used for preventive medicine in sustainable agriculture, implementing sustainable methods of production increases the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating people. Pandemics: Industrial agriculture, in which animals are kept in tight quarters, is a driver of disease.

Why are sustainable methods of production more likely to support and rely on the local economy?

Localization: Sustainable methods of production are more likely to support and rely on the local economy. Farms are no longer purchasing products, such as fertilizers and pesticides, from outside their communities, and instead are relying more heavily on local resources such as labor.

How has agriculture dominated food production in the United States?

It is characterized by large tracts of land planted with one crop, extensive use of fertilizers and pesticides, animals being held in CAFOs, and an emphasis on a select few crops that are used for animal feed and the production of processed foods.

How does agriculture affect the environment?

Environmental Impacts. Industrial agriculture is a driving force behind water pollution, soil degradation, and air pollution. The animals housed in CAFOs produce tons of manure every year which is either stored or applied to fields as a fertilizer.

What is the Farm Bill?

The Farm Bill also provides for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Stewardship Program which provide financial and technical assistance to farms that use sustainable methods that encourage improved water, air, and soil quality. The total budget for these programs is less than $5 billion.

What is agricultural sustainability?

If a technology works to improve productivity for farmers and does not cause undue harm to the environment , then it is likely to have some sustainability benefits. Agricultural systems emphasizing these principles also tend to be multifunctional within landscapes and economies (Dobbs & Pretty 2004; MEA 2005). They jointly produce food and other goods for farmers and markets, but also contribute to a range of valued public goods, such as clean water, wildlife and habitats, carbon sequestration, flood protection, groundwater recharge, landscape amenity value and leisure/tourism. In this way, sustainability can be seen as both relative and case dependent and implies a balance between a range of agricultural and environmental goods and services.

How does sustainability affect agriculture?

Concerns about sustainability in agricultural systems centre on the need to develop technologies and practices that do not have adverse effects on environmental goods and services , are accessible to and effective for farmers, and lead to improvements in food productivity . Despite great progress in agricultural productivity in the past half-century, with crop and livestock productivity strongly driven by increased use of fertilizers, irrigation water, agricultural machinery, pesticides and land, it would be over-optimistic to assume that these relationships will remain linear in the future. New approaches are needed that will integrate biological and ecological processes into food production, minimize the use of those non-renewable inputs that cause harm to the environment or to the health of farmers and consumers, make productive use of the knowledge and skills of farmers, so substituting human capital for costly external inputs, and make productive use of people’s collective capacities to work together to solve common agricultural and natural resource problems, such as for pest, watershed, irrigation, forest and credit management. These principles help to build important capital assets for agricultural systems: natural; social; human; physical; and financial capital. Improving natural capital is a central aim, and dividends can come from making the best use of the genotypes of crops and animals and the ecological conditions under which they are grown or raised. Agricultural sustainability suggests a focus on both genotype improvements through the full range of modern biological approaches and improved understanding of the benefits of ecological and agronomic management, manipulation and redesign. The ecological management of agroecosystems that addresses energy flows, nutrient cycling, population-regulating mechanisms and system resilience can lead to the redesign of agriculture at a landscape scale. Sustainable agriculture outcomes can be positive for food productivity, reduced pesticide use and carbon balances. Significant challenges, however, remain to develop national and international policies to support the wider emergence of more sustainable forms of agricultural production across both industrialized and developing countries.

What makes agriculture unique?

What makes agriculture unique as an economic sector is that it directly affects many of the very assets on which it relies for success. Agricultural systems at all levels rely on the value of services flowing from the total stock of assets that they influence and control, and five types of asset—natural, social, human, physical and financial capital—are now recognized as being important. There are, though, some advantages and misgivings with the use of the term capital. On the one hand, capital implies an asset, and assets should be cared for, protected and accumulated over long periods. On the other hand, capital can imply easy measurability and transferability. Since the value of something can be assigned a monetary value, then it can appear not to matter if it is lost, as the required money could simply be allocated to purchase another asset or to transfer it from elsewhere. But nature and its wider values is not so easily replaceable as a commodity (Coleman 1988; Ostrom 1990; Putnam et al. 1993; Flora & Flora 1996; Benton 1998; Uphoff 1998, 2002; Costanza et al. 1997; Pretty 2003). Nonetheless, terms such as natural, social and human capital are useful in helping to shape concepts around basic questions such as what is agriculture for and what system works best. The five capitals are defined in the following ways:

How does agriculture affect the environment?

Agriculture can negatively affect the environment through overuse of natural resources as inputs or their use as a sink for pollution. Such effects are called negative externalities because they are usually non-market effects and therefore their costs are not part of market prices. Negative externalities are one of the classic causes of market failure whereby the polluter does not pay the full costs of their actions, and therefore these costs are called external costs (Baumol & Oates 1988; Pretty et al.2000, 2003a; Dobbs & Pretty 2004; Moss 2008).

How will the world food system change?

An important change in the world food system will come from the increased consumption of livestock products (Fitzhugh 1998; Delgado et al.1999; Smil 2000). Meat demand is expected to rise rapidly with economic growth and this will change many farming systems. Livestock are important in mixed production systems, using foods and by-products that would not have been consumed by humans. But increasingly animals are raised intensively and fed with cheap and energetically inefficient cereals and oils. In industrialized countries, 73% of cereals are fed to animals; in developing countries, some 37% are used in this way. Currently, per capitaannual demand in industrialized countries is 550 kg of cereal and 78 kg of meat. By contrast, in developing countries, it is only 260 kg of cereal and 30 kg of meat.

How much has food production grown since the 1960s?

Since then, aggregate world food production has grown by 145%. In Africa it rose by 140%, in Latin America by almost 200% and in Asia by 280%. The greatest increases have been in China, where a fivefold increase occurred, mostly during the 1980s–1990s. In industrialized countries, production started from a higher base; yet it still doubled in the USA over 40 years and grew by 68% in Western Europe (FAO 2005).

Is agriculture sustainable?

However, agricultural sustainability does not require that all assets are improved at the same time. One agricultural system that contributes more to these capital assets than the other can be said to be more sustainable, but there may still be trade-offs with one asset increasing as the other falls. In practice, though, there are usually strong links between changes in natural, social and human capital (Pretty 2003), with agricultural systems having many potential effects on all three.

What is sustainable agriculture?

In the report, “ What is sustainable agriculture ?” they discuss that environmental sustainability in agriculture means good stewardship of the natural systems and resources that farms rely on . Among other things, this involves:

What does “sustainable” mean in farming?

To be sustainable doesn’t mean living outside the grid or returning to practices of the pre-industrial.

Why do we need fertilisers in monoculture?

The pesticides are needed because monoculture fields are highly attractive to certain weeds and insect pests ( Industrial Agriculture – USCUSA ).

What is regenerative agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture is a broad term that moves beyond the concept of sustainability. It represents a move away from conventional and high input farming techniques that degrade the quality of the soil. The movement aims to restore the fertility of the soil through a range of methods.

What has the Australian government done about farming?

The Australian Government has produced an interesting report that looks at Australian Farming and Agriculture over the last 200 years. They write that: “There have been many changes in farming methods over the last 200 years and Australian farmers have had to be adaptable as well as resilient and inventive.

Why are pesticides needed in monoculture?

The pesticides are needed because monoculture fields are highly attractive to certain weeds and insect pests ( Industrial Agriculture – USCUSA ). There is no wrong or right here — just the opportunity to become more knowledgeable about different systems and to continuously improve what we are all doing.

What is holistic agriculture?

A definition of holistic states: (from a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total) in agriculture means a systems thinking approach to managing resources. related to the idea that things should be studied as a whole and not just as a sum of their parts. Holistic agriculture has been explained as:

Sustainability Information from EPA

Sustainability Information from Other Sources

Sustainable Agriculture and Tribes

Sustainable Management of Food

• Sustainable Management of Foodis a systematic approach that seeks to reduce wasted food and its associated impacts over the entire life cycle, starting with the use of natural resources, manufacturing, sales, and consumption and ending with decisions on recovery or final disposal. EPA works to promote innovation and highlight the value and efficien…

See more on epa.gov

Forest Conservation and Agroforestry

Did you know that agriculture is responsible for 80 percent of tropical deforestation? The more we raze forests, the more we accelerate climate change. That’s terrible news for all of us, not least of all smallholder farmers, whose crops can be wiped out by droughts, floods, and pests and diseases. Avoiding deforesta…

See more on rainforest-alliance.org

Better Incomes For Farmers

• Farming can only be called sustainable if farmers can support their families. Fortunately, many of the approaches to improving farmer incomes improve the health of the Earth, too. Managing pests and weeds naturally, for example, reduces the need for harmful pesticides, thereby lowering costs. Planting fruit trees on farms can give farmers another p…

See more on rainforest-alliance.org

Better Wages and Working Conditions

Maximizing Soil Health and Carbon Storage

Water Conservation

Integrated Weed and Pest Management

Gender Equality