What is Sustainable Agriculture?
By Kachong
Overtime, Agriculture experienced a change as the use of machines, chemicals, new laws, and policies which were introduced increased production and revenue but ended up with some negative effects on the land, humans, animals, and the environment. Some of the negative impacts of the changes in Agricultural practices include; depletion of the topsoil, erosion, land degradation, increase in production cost and the contamination of surface and ground water.
Careful studies showed the need for better ways of practising agriculture in ways that will pose as minimal threat as possible to the environment, humans and animals and encourage conservation. This brought about the concept of Sustainable Agriculture.
Sustainable agriculture involves raising crops and rearing animals in sustainable ways to provide food, textile, and other agricultural related products in a long term to the society without jeopardizing the current and future generation’s ability to also meet their own needs.
Sustainable agriculture is aimed at providing a healthy environment for the current and future generations while practising agriculture, ensuring economic and social equity is maintained and, generating revenue that boost the economy.
Sustainable agriculture offers both innovative opportunities and economically beneficial opportunities to those involved in the agricultural system.
Sustainable agriculture ensures both human and natural resources are efficiently managed and conserved. It creates a balance between food production and preserving the environment. It also aims at reducing the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, conserves water and aids in increasing biodiversity in the ecosystem.
Sustainable agriculture helps improve the way of life and livelihood of the farmers.
Sustainable agriculture has various benefits, particularly to humans and the environment.
- For humans, crops produced using sustainable means are healthier and more nutritious as they are grown with very little or no chemicals.
- For the environment, it uses less energy in total production and further causes a reduced amount of chemicals released into the environment and reduces pollution of the environment.
We hope you enjoyed the article, there will be more articles from Kachong coming soon.
