How Can Sustainable Agriculture Be Better For Americans Vs. Industrial Agriculture?

What is sustainable agriculture? Sustainable agriculture is an alternative for solving fundamental and applied issues related to food production in an ecological way. ‘‘Sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals– environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity” (Kaushik 92). Energy conservation is a huge controversy around the world. There is too much energy being wasted and people are not caring enough to fix this problem. To fix this problem we need to turn to renewable energy resources.

In today’s society we face many problems as a nation and as a world, from economics, to war, to famine. These issues often cause us to overlook the most basic need: to look out for our planet's well being. Our main goal should be to conserve our natural resources such as soil and water. Agriculture, ironically, is often one of the factors that is contributing to the destruction of our soil and water. Farmers apply fertilizer, pesticides and many other chemicals to use on their fields. Fertilizer stimulates soil microbes, which consume organic

Continous use of chemical fertilizers can affect the soil property which later cause decrease in productivity, low nutrient recovery for plants uptake which cause higher cost of production and environmental pollution ( Sarkar et al ., 1997 ).

However, pesticides are used to control pests, which include insects, mice and other animals, unwanted plants (weeds), fungi, or microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. Often misunderstood to refer only to the insecticides, the term pesticide also applies to herbicides (that control weeds), fungicides (that control fungi), and substances used to control other pests. In addition, because many pests tend to travel between farms, resistance to pesticides can evolve at an inefficient rate. Farmers can increase the economic efficiency of chemical use by adapting integrated pest and resistance management practices, such as rotating crops and pesticides, reducing reliance on a single pesticide, adjusting planting and harvesting dates, scouting fields, and using more benign, and biological control

Local sustainable farming has many attributes, but one of the most important is to preserve the quality of the environment. Even though farming is not a new concept, many people do not know what it is or how it works, yet most of them think that food just comes from supermarkets. The current industrial agriculture system have improved the yields of production by growing monocrops such as corn and soy, which in turn is leading the land to erosion. It has also implemented the use of new technologies, mechanization, chemical products, and government policies (Ingels, Campbell 1.) However, it has had significant costs. Land deterioration, water contamination, and human health problems related to diet are some of them. As the industrial farms, sustainable farms also have high yield of production. As shown in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” Polyface, a local sustainable farm located in virginia, produces in a season: 30,000 dozen eggs, 10,000 broilers, 800 stewing hens, 25,000 Lbs of beef, 25,000 lbs of pork, 1,000 turkeys, and 500 rabbits (14). Opposite to Industrial farming, local sustainable agriculture is helping the land recover thanks to the implementation of multicropping and the use of

The most popular agricultural method is monoculture. Monoculture is the practice of growing one species of crop in one designated area year after year. Some pros we can identify of this practice are it being “faster, cheaper, greater,” producing higher yields, profitability, and lowered costs. In this practice there is no rotation between seasons with other crops. The same crop is grown in the same land area year after year. Through this it becomes easier for farmers to keep track of their farms. It’s a simple and easy practice because one does not need to fret about multiply crops at a time. One can master the techniques of preventing diseases and pests to maximizing their yield. The focus is on one specific crop type, making it easier to harvest and irrigate. One is also able to utilize their labor, money, and time resources more efficiently due to the

According to the European Union’s Joint Research Center, soil contains nearly one third of all living organisms, but only about one percent have been identified. Another study in 2003 featured in the journal Ecosystems estimated that 5% of the United State’s soil biodiversity was “in danger of substantial loss, or complete extinction, due to agriculture and urbanization.” (Robbins) The damage comes from multiple sources. Paving or building over soil effectively blocks out the air, water, and light needed to have a functioning soil biome meaning that roads, cities, sidewalks, houses, and businesses have destroyed the soil beneath it. Agricultural practices remove organic material, decreasing food, and then allows fallowed land to become dry and exposed to the elements. Household, industrial, and agricultural toxins can also sterilize soil if not disposed of

Use of pesticides and fertilizers on farms has increased by 26-fold over the past 50 years, fueling increases in crop production globally. But there have been serious environmental consequences.

Each year the farmer would sow two of the fields with crops while one was left unused. This allowed the third field time to rest and recover. Farmers soon came to realized that this type of crop rotation helped to improve soil fertility and helped control insects and diseases.

Conversely, natural cultivation is an advanced technology that does not harm the environment as well as the biosphere. As a matter of fact, no longer do cultivated areas contaminated, pesticide residual, emaciated and degraded. Instead, this technique assists boost biodiversity and the biosphere reserve in nature and protect the environment from antiquated farming practice. It would be the height of folly, however, not to mention some drawbacks of organic agriculture and advantages of intensive farming. For one thing, organic farming, while conventional farming is manufacturing bigger yields, cannot produce enough food to assuage the world’s appetite. For another thing, it would be rather difficult for the impoverished and underprivileged to afford high-priced products from natural farming, which, consequently, can in part limit their interests of utilizing fresh food. Meanwhile, intensive agriculture, with curtailed prices, can meet the requirements of more people. In conclusion, there is no denying that organic and intensive farming play a vital role in life. Notwithstanding, everything frequently parallels with its downsides and these methods are not an exception. Anyway, with the rational ways of exploiting these technological advances and future development in their security, hopefully all problems will be eliminated and the merits can be

The US Food system has been likened to a lopsided hourglass; several farmers (producers), few input suppliers/intermediaries (processors), and several consumers. For the food system to be truly sustainable there must be a rational and optimized use of the natural resources that underpin food production and processing, such as labor, land, clean water, energy, and other agricultural inputs. Equally, reducing postharvest losses incurred at the various facets of the food chain howbeit on-farm and beyond the farm gate must be an essential component in any strategy to improve food security without increasing the burden on the natural environment. Failure in this regard would have long-term consequences for the sustainability of food production.

The Brundtland report defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” From early times, philosophers, such as Thomas Malthus, believed humanity could not be sustained. Malthus believed mankind would reach their carrying capacity, specifically with regards to food. Yet, this notion changed in subsequent years, thanks in part to the green revolution. This revolution helped increase crop yields due to new fertilizers, pesticides, etc. While there became more food available, sustainability, with regards to producing food in an environmentally friendly way, ran into some difficulties. While the Brundtland commission defined sustainability, there are three components that must be integrated for the well-being of all—social, environmental, and economic. Each component of sustainability must be looked at critically when considering the sustainable use of any resource. While many simply worried about having enough food available in the world, one must think of food sustainability with regards to environmental, economic, and social implications. As follows, the importance of food sustainability will be discussed, along with the attempts to measure food sustainability.

Biological control involves the use of living natural enemies to lower the population of a particular pest species (Eilenberg et al. 2001). These natural enemies are called biological control agents and can include viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasitoids, predators or competitors. Biological control is an application of density dependence and population regulation and is one aspect of integrated pest management. After the discovery of synthetic chemicals as controls, research into biological controls received little attention; however it is currently gaining popularity. This is due to its many advantages over other control methods, such as synthetic pesticides, and its few disadvantages.

Food production, human health and welfare, and the state of the world's natural resources are all connected. Growing food is among the most essential services our ecosystem provides, since it is fundamentally dependent on the world's atmosphere, soils, freshwater and genetic resources. The health and sustainability of the food systems is a human health issue. For example airborne pesticides can drift onto water resources or pesticides can run off directly from croplands into groundwater and surface waters, potentially affecting wild flora, fauna, and humans. Besides water, soil is another critical basis for long-term fertility in food production. Existing agricultural practices mine soils of their organic matter and leave them nitrogen depleted. Because industrialized agriculture generally lacks practices to sustainably cycle these resources within the production system, they often become wastes that further undercut human

Crop rotation is a systematic approach to choosing which crop to plant where in your vegetable garden from one year to the next. The goals of crop rotation are to help manage soil fertility and to help reduce conflicts with soilborne diseases and soil-dwelling insects like corn. This process then changes the different types of nutrients in the soil helping the soil to have more nutrients and the crops to be better at resisting diseases and pests. One of the methods that was used with this appropriate farmer was fertilizer. Fertilizers were first used by farmers in the Middle Easter and European countries approximately eight thousand years ago. Biology of the plant: Another method used was cover crops. One of the cover crops that were used