The Soil Degradation Of Nigeria Essay

Times have changed, and so has the family, the community and our environment. And these changes have impacted our lives and earth immeasurably. This is where the factor greed comes in to play, the need for more. This need for more called for extensive measures, measures like fertilizers, pesticides and equipment to work the ground and harvest the crops became necessity. Agriculture became a booming business that did not and still does not promote the well-being of the employee nor the individual let alone the family unit and community. Since 1950 an average farm size has doubled, but the number of laborers decreased substantially and the number of small local farmers has been cut in half. Farmers have been forced to become more efficient and there 's been a reliance on greater chemicals and technology, which has become very extensive and expensive. Sadly, what has been short term expansion has become a long-term threat (Trautmann, 2012). This greed driven increase has led to subtle damaging ramifications that most people are ignorant to. Their needs are being met as quality is being forsaken. Our environment is being squandered. Selfishness abounds.

The three contingencies of Patel’s plan include changing the governing laws of agribusiness, improving the conditions of and supporting rural areas, and changing the role of eating in society. Before much progress can be made, the ways in which businesses are required to operate must change. Without any new legislations to stand in their way, nothing will alter the ways in which they operate or the ways they look to further solidify their dominance. Next, rural growers simply need more help. In current conditions, they barely scrape by due to the increasing demands from their purchasers and the decreasing amounts of compensation collected. Contrary to the original perception, crop subsidies, most associated with corn, provide no help to these smaller farmers. They can’t compete with the mass-growers and their enormous swathes of land. It drives the rural farmers out of those particular markets, and it often prevents them from growing crops their land is most suitable for. Finally, Pollan pushes the idea that there must be a revamp of the meaning of food to consumers. As it stands, people view eating as a task rather than an enjoyable experience. This leads the consumer to think little of the food, especially in ways Michael Pollan insist they must think about the food. This anti-cooking architecture of society is, nonetheless, a self-perpetuating cycle of

Agriculture is extremely important to the Bolivian economy, employing two percent of the labor force. Bolivia's agriculture suffers from antiquated farming methods, uneven population distribution, and inadequate transportation. Although now self-sufficient in the production

There is no doubt that urban agriculture has many benefits people who are living in urban area especially fixing the food insecurity problem. According to the USDA Economic Research Service (2016), food insecurity can happened when a household loss access to fresh foods due the lack in social and low economic. When the population of people concentrated in an area with bad economic situation increases, it will later affects the employment opportunities and food insecurity might be a critical issue. This is supported by a

However, some believe, that a shift in the way we produce food may have some unintended consequences. They contend that poverty in nations such as Africa and Asia, is caused by the low productivity of the unindustrialized farm labor. The U.S. Agriculture Department projects, without reform, there will be over a thirty percent increase in the numbers of the ‘food insecure’ people in those nations over the next decade (Paarlberg 179).

In fact, it is also necessary for governmental bodies to become involved in promoting localized food such as policies and labelling laws that encourage healthier eating and food re-localization. In addition, regulations to foster sustainable food production are essential. Moreover, in the movie Cuban, the Accidental Revolution, David Suzuki, introduces how the government’s vision becomes one with the farmers, that there is a possibility for the industrial food system to work together. For example, Cuban agronomists describe the benefits of crop rotation for soil health, while Cuban farmers express pleasure with the relative productivity and profitability of their ecological and somehow newly industrialized farming systems. By inventing a new way to create food and working with nature, profit is gained and diversity is generated leading the country to possess the largest national program in sustainable agriculture. With the government’s assistance, farmers learn to do more with less and growing food as a community becomes more a passion that profits. In his article, Wes Jackson also supports the idea of finding a new way to create food without technology and science. Instead of focusing mainly on the local food systems, he emphasizes that by using all the knowledge acquired from the pioneers and their cleverness, we can build domestic prairies that have high-yielding fields that are planted only once every twenty years. It is not the entire answer to the total agriculture problems, but breeding new crops from native plants selected from nature’s abundance and simulating the resettlement botanical complexity of a region should make it easier to solve many agricultural problems (40). The share to work side by side with nature may be one of the solution to establish a new sea of perennial prairie

South Asia is one of the most densely populated regions of the world, where despite a slow growth, agriculture remains the backbone of rural economy as it employs one half to over 90 percent of the labor force. Both extensive and intensive policy measures for agriculture

Without policies to guarantee proper care, use reasonable access to soil, we would have further limitations to access of crops and in turn, less access to sustainable food sources. Without the governing oversight of laws and policies, we would likely be living in a country looking at “increased poverty, hunger, conflict, land grabs, and mass migration of displaces populations” (Montanerella, 2015). There are many concerns that may arise when developing and enforcing agricultural policies, but if policies are not made to improve standards, technology, maintain diversity and preserve water, we would be apt to face devastating effects. Some of the major concerns involved with agricultural policy include: biosecurity, labor supply, technology, water access, water trades, and

I also agree with Lyson and Kloppenburg on the idea that the distancing of humans from their food sources and the consolidation of farms into the hands of absent agribusiness owners contributes to the socioeconomic problems of our agro-food system as well as perpetuates a culture in which people are unaware of where their food comes from, as described by Berry (39, 35, 43). However, an issue and recurring theme in all these papers is related to Lyson’s description of civic agriculture, or more small-scale, local ways of farming. Although this idea of re-embedding farms into communities could have positive environmental and socioeconomic impacts, all four authors seem to rely on a sense of nostalgia and the idea of returning to former ways of agriculture. Although there are aspects of former systems that would be beneficial to reincorporate, the social, economic, and environmental problems of today differ from those of the past and should therefore be treated with different solutions. Because the authors rely on this narrative, they do not extensively address today’s socioeconomic problems. For example, while decentralizing the food

Historically, planners and developers have waited until this point before looking outside a region for potential development sites. This is a difficult point from which to return, and in many cases impossible. Capacity to produce sufficient food on a local scale is an enormous hurdle for this bioregion. Perhaps more challenging is that this blight is common to many adjacent regions. One solution is to improve on alternative production processes such as Urban Agriculture (UA) which until recently has been associated with cities in developing countries. However, “recent concerns about economic and food security have resulted in a growing movement to produce food in cities of developed countries including the United States.”(Lovell 2010)

On the other hand, the lecturer disputes this point by clarifying the fact that in today’s world, it is attempted that the less original lands cover for agricultural activities. The lecturer explains that the novel agricultural technologies effort to breed more productive crops by which the more food for human is produced.

Food security is closely associated with availability, affordability, and accessibility of culturally appropriate foods. The promotion of the local cultivation of ethnic vegetables will increase the availability of culturally appropriate vegetables in the local stores; improve the socioeconomic condition of the people living in the low-income areas which will ultimately increase the affordability and the accessibility of culturally appropriate foods for the most vulnerable sections of the population including South Asian communities. Both provincial and municipal policies impact all the dimensions of food security, including the production of ethnic vegetables. Therefore, it is important to increase the coordination, communication, and cooperation

We found significant negative relationships between each of these pillars of food security and a household’s intensity of cash crop production, measured by both quantity and area. A qualitative assessment indicated community perception of these tradeoffs and identified potential mechanisms, including increasing food prices and competing activities for land use, as underlying causes. This can be related to the example of mid-town communities, where we have an abundance of food deserts, causing many citizens to grow their own

Erosion removes the surface soils, containing most of the organic matter, plant nutrients, and fine soil particles, which help to retain water and nutrients in the root zone where they are available to plants. Thus it affects the productivity of plants. The remaining, the subsoil, tends to be less fertile, less absorbent and less able to retain pesticides, fertilizers, and other plant nutrients. There are over 17,000 soil types recognized worldwide. They vary widely in structure, erodibility, fertility, and ability to produce crops. A generalized soil profile for a humid, temperate climate is showed. When the natural vegetation is cleared for agriculture, soils become exposed to erosion and loss of soil fertility. The removal of the above-ground natural

• Another factor affecting land use and land availability within the Niger Delta region is the multi