Sustainable Agriculture - Ian C.

Sustainability is defined as the ability of the planet’s own natural systems to exist indefinitely through balance and adaptability, bending as the wind blows and circumstances change. Therefore, in order to respond to environmental changes, the whole of humanity must change. Through our earlier history, we succeeded in adapting to global changes, and succeeded in this goal. However, as human civilization expanded and built it’s treasured foundations, the changes necessary to sustain the environment have become all the more difficult.

One of the most enduring and primordial issues of sustainability seeds itself deep within the soil upon which we tread. The single, most important necessity for the formation of human society is doubtlessly the production of surplus foods through agriculture. Because all those interested in reading this have at least a cursory understanding of cultural anthropology, there should be little need to explain how vital food raised from the soil is. Therefore, we are also aware of the consequences of sabotaging own land with negligence, especially with the memory of the American Dust Bowl relatively fresh in our minds. Before formulating an opinion on the current state of the soil, one must be reminded of soil’s depletion legacy. In Central America, climatic conditions created a uniquely impossible situation for human settlement- though water was abundant and corn was capable of nourishing bellies, one may find that living in a land with the humidity of a jungle and the baking sun of a desert would surely drive one mad. However, once one considers this, the achievements of human societies to cope with this, the history of their cities, and the chilling mentality of its people inspires a grand sense of awe to us outsiders in the modern world. In the end, however, countless histories, cities, settlements, cultures, and stories where lost even before Cortés wiped away more than two thousand years of history. To blame is the depletion of soil with the proliferation of maize- a delicious, starchy crop with a wide area of applications and great source of nutrients. Today, corn is the central crop of our agricultural economy… so much that we tend to repeat the mistakes of the Mayans, Olmecs, and other ancients by ruining the soil with the incessant planting and harvesting of this crop. At the same time, it’s over production drives down the value of the crop as well. In order to combat a potentially disastrous surplus of corn, many governments have dubiously paid farmers to grow the crop and not bring it to market. This practice, combined with heavy use of chemical fertilizers, quickly turns soil to dust.

There are solutions to this problem however, but it would entail extremely difficult sacrifices. Corn, wheat, non-tropical rice, and other annual crops are very soil intensive, but we prize the quality and versatility of what these plants bear- essential ingredients in making such foods as bread, pasta, and tortillas, which are rich in quick, storable energy. Perennial crops, however, demand fewer nutrients from the soil and do not need to waste valuable energy in re-growing after they have been harvested. They also require less fertilizer, use nitrogen in the soil more efficiently, and develop deeper root systems, all of which are better for sustaining a more diverse ecosystem of microbes than with annual crops. Unfortunately, supporters of this exchange ignore the massive cultural, economic, and dietary shifts that a widespread change of this nature would require. In this day and age, people in developed countries such as the United States view the consumption of carbohydrates as an ugly, fattening act. However, the inevitable truth is that societies rely on the moderate consumption of these foods to support a labor-intensive life… a balance of high-energy inputs and outputs. A shift to less easily stored energy would entail a massive change in dining habits that would have to account for the adoption of foods that are, when comparing durability, perishability, malleability, and the ratio of energy to volume, much clumsier than common grains. The economics of farming, though already in need of change, may need to be drastically restructured to yield crops that are not simply mowed down after every harvest. In addition, history has also proven that shifts in agricultural economy required similarly massive shifts in social structure, such as the agricultural revolutions of both antiquity and pre-Industrial Revolution Europe. By this mode of thinking, the seemingly simple shift from annual plants to perennials becomes a groundbreaking and highly demanding change not only to the agricultural system, but to the whole of human society- the results of which may be unfathomable.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090804071358.htm