When you are sitting in front of your favorite meal and your mouth is salivating from the amazing smells that is illumining off your plate, have you ever stopped to wonder about the process that allowed the food to reach your plate?
Before, being put onto your plate, food is produced, processed, packaged transported, prepared and served, and throughout every step it releases greenhouse gasses into the air.
Increased population results in an increase in food insecurity, a greater demand for agriculture and ultimately overexploitation of the environment. So, are we supposed to give up having children, becoming mothers and fathers in order to ensure food security? Well no, but one solution can include sustainable agriculture practices, to help ensure that agriculture practices does not exceed the environments “carrying capacity”.
First, one might ask how does agriculture contribute to climate change, loss of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions and several other horrific impacts we have witnessed it having on our precious planet earth?
Well good question! Agriculture is the means of faming practices, which include the cultivation of soil in order to grow crops and the nurturing of animals for food, wool and other products. However, when agriculture is produced through unsustainable practices it can contribute immensely to the issue of climate change, through greenhouse gas emissions. Farming releases a great deal of methane and nitrous oxide, also contributing to biodiversity loss through the production of turning non-agricultural land, such as forests, into farmland, cutting down all the trees, eviting them from their homes in order to use it for farmland.
So then, what is sustainable agriculture? How is it going to help eradicate these harmful practices? Well, sustainable agriculture involves an economic factor, the ability of farms to be a lucrative business, making profit that contributes to the economy and enhancing farms with useful technology. A social factor, including the proper treatment of farmers and abiding the laws put in place, and an environmental factor, producing goods in a way that is mutually beneficial for both society and the environment.
Sustainable agriculture involves working towards building and maintaining healthy soil, cutting down on water, air, energy and climate pollution and promoting biodiversity. It will allow us to work together with nature as oppose to against it. If we are able to successfully use sustainable agriculture, it can be a contributing factor to the demolishment of the damaging effects it has on the planet and ensure food security in a positive manner.
We should be moving towards sustainable agricultural practices to better the planet and ensure food security, but we can not get there by clicking our heels three times and magically appearing in a world unaffected by climate change and food insecurity, instead we have to follow the “green brick road” towards more environmental friendly practices.
References
ibhatu KT, Qaim M (2017) Rural food security, subsistence agriculture, and seasonality. PLoS ONE 12(10): e0186406. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.018640
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Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 