Chapter 22. Chapter 22: Agriculture: Raising Crops

What is sustainable agriculture...?

Why You Should Care

It is difficult nowadays to appreciate the importance of agriculture to human society because few of us need to be involved in the growing of our food. However, the invention of agriculture is thought to have allowed humans to give up nomadic hunting and gathering, develop stable communities, and have larger populations. The other side of the coin is that with larger populations come the problems of famine, epidemics, and war. By the 20^th century, the yields provided by current agricultural practices had become insufficient to meet the demand of Earth’s population, and so more industrial and automated methods were developed.

These methods include planting monocultures—single crops all of the same variety planted over large areas so that it is more efficient to raise and harvest them. Modern chemistry has also helped; synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides were developed to provide crops with the optimal amount of nutrients while killing any other organism that might compete with them.

Many agriculture and environmental experts consider most industrial growing practices to be unsustainable for the long term because of the exhaustion and degradation of land, water, and energy resources it causes. Sustainable agriculture refers collectively to a wide range of practices that are intended to produce food while keeping the environmental impacts low enough that the same land can produce food indefinitely. Some sustainable practices are direct, like low- and no-till cultivation methods that help reduce erosion, conserve water, and reduce the demand for synthetic fertilizers. Some are indirect, like community supported agriculture (CSA) agreements that pair farmers with nearby consumers so that food does not have to be shipped long distances. As you will see with renewable energy resources, there is not a one-size-fits-all answer. Methods have to be tailored for locality, climate, and resource availability; trying to make the same crop grow equally well across varying landscapes is the tactic of industrial agriculture.