Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society’s present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services.

Purpose behind sustainable agriculture is not only to think about the needs of current or future generation but also maximizing profitability and making efficient use of resources like water, land and other natural resources along with keeping up with food security.

Fact – To meet the growing food demand of the over nine billion people who will exist by 2050 and the expected dietary changes, agriculture will need to produce 60 percent more food globally in the same period.

The problem in agriculture currently has two faces, one to keep up with the increasing population around the world by increasing crop production and other one is minimizing damages causing to the world due to increase in crop production.

Keeping everything in mind, sustainable agriculture can be accomplished using following practices:

 1.      Using alternate sources of energy is the best and the most important way to go sustainable and this can be achieved using solar energy by installing solar panels, also farmers can make efficient use of geothermal heat pumps to dig deeper. 

2.      One important thing to determine is that not all pests are harmful to crops, so study which are threat to your crops, and which are not and how to manage it along with preserving wildlife. All this comes under integrated pest management. 

3.      Another innovation which farmers can bring into their lives is a combination of hydroponics and aquaponics system.