Sustainable agriculture
[6] Sustainable agriculture consists of environment friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without causing damage to human or natural systems.The growing popularity of sustainable agriculture is connected to the wide-reaching fear that the planet's carrying capacity (or planetary boundaries), in terms of the ability to feed humanity, has been reached or even exceeded.By leveraging AI's skills in areas such as resource optimization, crop health monitoring, and yield prediction, farmers might greatly advance toward more environmentally friendly agricultural practices.An example of a case in which a global view may be warranted is the application of fertilizer or manure, which can improve the productivity of a farm but can pollute nearby rivers and coastal waters (eutrophication).[55] Over a billion tonnes of southern Africa's soil are being lost to erosion annually, which if continued will result in halving of crop yields within thirty to fifty years.[61] Looking back over the 20th century shows that for people in poverty, following environmentally sound land practices has not always been a viable option due to many complex and challenging life circumstances.[62] Currently, increased land degradation in developing countries may be connected with rural poverty among smallholder farmers when forced into unsustainable agricultural practices out of necessity.[66] The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that in coming decades, cropland will continue to be lost to industrial and urban development, along with reclamation of wetlands, and conversion of forest to cultivation, resulting in the loss of biodiversity and increased soil erosion.[81] This effort has the potential to help local communities because a significant portion live off the food they grow themselves, and it will be profitable because the yield of their main produce will remain stable.[97] To move toward sustainable agriculture, farmers are encouraged to utilize green pesticides, which cause less harm to both human health and habitats, but would entail a higher production cost.[99] These place-based barriers include factors such as weather conditions, topography, and soil quality which can cause losses in production, resulting in the reluctance to switch from conventional practices.[100] Conventional agricultural practices since the evolution of technology have caused significant damage to the environment through biodiversity loss, disrupted ecosystems, poor water quality, among other harms.[104] The ecocentric approach emphasizes no- or low-growth levels of human development, and focuses on organic and biodynamic farming techniques with the goal of changing consumption patterns, and resource allocation and usage."[79] The major debate comes from what system will provide a path to that goal because if an unsustainable method is used on a large scale it will have a massive negative effect on the environment and human population.The desired outcomes of the farm are achieved without the need for more land cultivation or destruction of natural habitat; the system performance is upgraded with no net environmental cost.Recent work in irrigated rice production system of east Asia has suggested that – in relation to pest management at least – promoting the ecosystem service of biological control using nectar plants can reduce the need for insecticides by 70% whilst delivering a 5% yield advantage compared with standard practice.[115] Vertical farming is a concept with the potential advantages of year-round production, isolation from pests and diseases, controllable resource recycling and reduced transportation costs.[122] Certain plants can be cropped for use as biofumigants, "natural" fumigants, releasing pest suppressing compounds when crushed, ploughed into the soil, and covered in plastic for four weeks.This method is extremely productive and has recently been utilized by indigenous groups in the area and the nearby Amazon Basin to make use of lands that have been historically hard to cultivate.The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods, instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.[171] Starting from a focus on land usage in Southern Australia, permaculture has since spread in scope to include other regions and other topics, such as appropriate technology and intentional community design.[181] Around 500 VSS today apply to key exports of many developing countries, such as coffee, tea, bananas, cocoa, palm oil, timber, cotton, and organic agri-foods.[185] It also called for dramatically increased investments in sustainable agriculture in the next decade, including in national research and development budgets, land rehabilitation, economic incentives, and infrastructure improvement.In the official page of the program From Farm to Fork is cited Frans Timmermans the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, saying that: The coronavirus crisis has shown how vulnerable we all are, and how important it is to restore the balance between human activity and nature.[192] Decentralized governance within the farming community would allow for more adaptive management at local levels to help focus on climate change mitigation, food security, and landscape-scale ecological stewardship.STBs are hubs often created in rural areas with significant rates of small-scale farming that combine knowledge of traditional practices with new innovations and technology implementation.[198] In collaboration with the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), CEEW (council for energy, environment and water), has given an overview of the current state of sustainable agriculture practices and systems (SAPSs) in India.Further proposals for several measures for promoting SAPSs, including restructured government support and rigorous evidence generation for benefits and implementation of sustainable farming are ongoing progress in Indian Agriculture.[201] In 1907, the American author Franklin H. King discussed in his book Farmers of Forty Centuries the advantages of sustainable agriculture and warned that such practices would be vital to farming in the future.[205] This potential future inability to feed the world's population has been a concern since the English political economist Thomas Malthus in the early 1800s, but has become increasingly important recently.
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