7.4 Billion People + Zero Impact, Can Our Numbers Add Up?
In a time with rising food demands and increasing environmental impacts, could sustainable agriculture be the answer we’re all looking for?
Agriculture’s long history has illustrated the complicated and dynamic interaction of the environment and food production. With an ever-increasing population, and thus exponentially growing pollution, some individuals are turning to entirely sustainable farming as a solution.
The sustainable agriculture and farming movement has evolved a lot since its beginnings in the early 1980s. While industrial agriculture is still the dominant method of produce growth, sustainable methods have begun to change the food production landscape. The larger sustainable development movement has had huge impacts and has striven, in recent years, to push developed countries to find and adhere to creative solutions to the environmental issues caused by the pollution and detrimental impacts created by humans. Sustainable agriculture acts as a part of this larger effort, however food production accounts for a significant portion of both human need and environmental pollution and as such, demands a solution. So is that solution zero-impact, sustainable farming?
The industrialized agriculture of current practice results in impressive yields of crops, however these productions come at the expense of the environment. Crops require fertile soil and protection from weeds as well as insects and other pests in order to produce the necessary healthy and hearty crops. Many modern farmers argue that these requirements can be met in sustainable and low or even zero impact ways, meaning that little to no waste is generated from the food production process.
“To make it as natural as possible, that’s how I think people should take an approach to sustainable practice” says researcher and aspiring sustainable farmer, Olivia Watkins. “I think that’s the most important part of sustainable agriculture, because we’ve destroyed the land so much, its really necessary to help get the soil back to a high functioning ability to have plants with actual nutrients in them but also maintaining that ecosystem.”
Modern research has worked to find agroecologically based methods that can succeed in meeting the world’s food needs while eliminating the negative impacts of current industrialized agriculture.
In the food production industry today, crops are produced as a huge monocrop — growing a single crop on the same land year after year. While this is a very economically efficient system, consistent monocropping severely depletes soil biodiversity and nutrients and makes crops more susceptible to opportunistic insects and other pests. This ecosystem fragility creates an increased need for harmful, chemical pesticides and fertilizers and irrevocably damages the soil and land. Sustainable farming seeks to change this cycle.
Crop rotation (growing different crops in succession in the same field) is a powerful method in sustainable agriculture. Crop rotation acts in combination with the natural nutrient and carbon cycles to produce the healthiest crops with the least chemical additives. Pest issues decrease because of the consistent turnover in crop type and disruption to pest reproductive cycles. In addition, certain crops, like soybeans and other legumes, can naturally replenish the nutrients in the soil, thus diminishing or completely eliminating the need for additional chemical fertilizers.
The current industrialized methods rely on chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and genetically modified crops to sustain food production. These harmful practices deplete and degrade soil, reduce biodiversity, and generate huge amounts of air and water pollutants that contribute to global temperature rise, degrade the natural environment and endanger the health of everyone, from farmers to animals to consumers.
Organic fertilizers are another technique in sustainable farming that are a great alternative to these synthetic chemical additives. Organic fertilizers are natural fertilizers derived from matter such as animal waste and manure, compost and other vegetable matter/byproducts. Minerals such as peat or limestone, both found in compost, help to aerate and increase absorption of the soil. Decomposing crop and plant residue help to increase fertility of the soil by adding nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that help to enrich the soil and produce healthier, heartier crops.
Watkins, whose research focuses on the agricultural practices impacts on the microbial content and fertility of soil, says, “Synthetic fertilizers mainly have NPK in them, which is definitely what the soil needs but that is not all the soil needs. There are other macronutrients and micronutrients like iron, selenium, calcium, etc. that organic fertilizers can contain all these nutrients.”
Healthy soil can also have a place in the sequestration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. According to the Rodale Institute, “Organic agriculture can remove from the air and sequester 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre per year.” This means that a huge portion of the carbon emitted into the environment through cars, factories and other forms of pollutants, would be removed from the atmosphere.
This sequestration of carbon will help to combat global temperature rise and the resulting forest fires and could even serve as a solution to the crippling droughts plaguing areas across California, the United States and the world. Therefore, organic farming can increase yield in drought years since the additional carbon storage allows soil to hold more water. For wetter years, the organic materials provided by natural fertilizer can wick water away from plant roots, reducing erosion and keeping plants securely in place. These advantages not only help increase yields of essential crops, but also help farmers mitigate and adapt to the increasingly erratic and intense weather patterns of climate change.
Sustainable and zero-impact farming represents an amazing shift from the industrialized farming of the modern day. As the name suggests, zero-impact farming can significantly diminish the amount of waste and chemical additives that go into the process of food production. While this lofty goal has obvious benefits for the environment, many are concerned with just how this could possibly provide for the human population.
“Is there any way that sustainable agriculture and farming practices could ever be expanded enough to provide for the entire world population?” wonders Cara Hoffman, a student in New York City and former case manager at the Sarah Burke House, a shelter for women who are victims of domestic violence. “We see women come in every day who need help, and that includes better access to fresh food, can sustainable farming possibly provide for all of them and their families?”
This is a common worry among people across the world, with 7.4 billion people and a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, could entirely sustainable practices of agriculture possibly provide for everyone? It is estimated that agricultural systems will need to increase food production by 70% in order to provide for the growing food demand. Hunger and malnutrition is still prevalent today in areas all across the world, if sustainable practices decrease yield even slightly, how can major human impact be prevented? Also, sustainable practices are often more expensive for farmers; organic fertilizers are pricier and crop rotation can be more expensive in the short term. As such, the organic crops produced are more expensive. The prices of non-organic strawberries? $2.50. Organic? $4.99. In areas such as East Harlem where food deserts are already a significant problem, wouldn’t zero-impact, sustainable farming make it all but impossible for low-income people to buy fresh foods?
These questions are vital in the movements surrounding food production. Will sustainable farming be able to provide for Earth’s people? If we continue with industrialized agriculture and ignore the environmental impacts, will we eventually destroy our planet? We are at a critical juncture of agricultural history, a point in time where action is needed to protect our natural resources yet an ever-growing population of people need better access to healthy, fresh foods. So this all begs the real question, do we have to choose between providing for the people and sustaining our earth?
