Agricultural Practices for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security
What is Sustainable Agriculture?
The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society's food and textile needs in the present without jeopardizing future generations' ability to meet their own. Sustainable agriculture practitioners strive to integrate three main goals into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity. Growers, food processors, distributors, retailers, consumers, and waste managers all have a role to play in ensuring a sustainable agricultural system.
Many practices are commonly used by people working in sustainable agriculture and food systems. Consumers and retailers concerned about sustainability can look for "values-based" foods grown in ways that promote farmworker well-being, are environmentally friendly, or help the local economy. And researchers in sustainable agriculture frequently work across disciplines, combining biology, economics, engineering, chemistry, community development, and many others. Sustainable agriculture, on the other hand, is more than just a set of practices.
Sustainable Agriculture Practices
Sustainability practitioners shift away from fertilizers and toward nitrogen-fixing plants, away from aggressive pesticides and natural enemies, and away from other techniques listed below.
• Crop rotation and diversity: Planting a variety of crops can provide numerous benefits, including healthier soil and improved pest control. Crop diversity practices include intercropping (growing a variety of crops in the same area) and complex multiyear crop rotations.
• Cover crops and perennials are being planted: Cover crops like clover, rye, and hairy vetch are planted during the off-season when soils would otherwise be left bare, whereas perennial crops keep soil covered and living roots in the ground all year. These crops protect and improve soil health by reducing the need for fertilizers and herbicides by preventing erosion, replenishing soil nutrients, and keeping weeds at bay.
• The use of integrated pest management (IPM): A variety of methods, including mechanical and biological controls, can be used to keep pest populations under control while reducing the use of chemical pesticides.
• Bringing livestock and crops together: Plant and animal production are typically kept separate in industrial agriculture, with animals living far from the areas where their feed is produced and crops growing far from abundant manure fertilizers. A growing body of evidence suggests that integrating crop and animal products can increase farm efficiency and profitability.
• Adopting agroforestry techniques: Farmers can provide shade and shelter for plants, animals, and water resources by incorporating trees or shrubs into their operations, while also potentially earning additional income from fruit or nut crops.
• Management of entire systems and landscapes: Uncultivated or less intensively cultivated areas are treated as integral to sustainable farms. Natural vegetation along streams, for example, or strips of prairie plants within or around crop fields, can help control erosion, reduce nutrient runoff, and support bees and other pollinators, as well as overall biodiversity.
Food Security
According to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security, food security means that all people have physical, social, and economic access to enough, safe, and nutritious food at all times to meet their food choices and dietary needs for an active and healthy life.
A changing climate, a growing global population, rising food prices, and environmental stressors will all have significant but uncertain effects on food security in the coming decades. Adaptation strategies and policy responses to global change are urgently needed, including options for dealing with water allocation, land use patterns, food trade, post-harvest food processing, and food prices and safety.
