Sunday 15 January 2012

Sustainable agriculture

Now onto a topic that I am pretty passionate about; sustainable agriculture.
This is something that I feel most of the people in today's world have no idea what it is nor why it will be so important in the next few years/decades.

It's a widely known fact that oil is a finite resource on this planet and the era of cheap and easily accessible food/water/electricity will be coming to an end around the same time as the oil runs out. Don't fret though! There are plenty of methods available to help alleviate this when the time comes.

Below is an infographic I have come across that is fairly easy to assemble and is very beneficial for the environment!

In addition to this system we can implement, there are some other considerations needed for sustainable agriculture:

First and foremost is availability to water. As we all know, crops need water to survive (and so do we!), so we must be smart when tapping a water supply and not use more than can be replenished over weeks/months/years. This way we never run out of water and never run the risk of losing our crops etc.

Another important aspect is stopping soil erosion. This is becoming a big problem in a lot of places around the world that practice large scale factory farming which drains the soil of its nutrients. This can be worked around by using a bit of smarts and replenishing the soil with decaying organic matter (ie. composting) which will be absorbed into the soil thus replenishing all the vital ingredients for happy plants (and humans)!

For further reading check out the Wiki article.

3 comments:

  1. Why haven't more farms switched over to this method?

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    Replies
    1. I'd say it would cost them too much money initially to move over, but once that's done costs would go down.

      I think it's just too easy for farmers to plant realllly big cash crops (ie. corn, soy, wheat) and get subsidized from the government than have to pay their own money to set up better, more efficient farms that don't wreck the land.

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  2. always good to have a setup like this for when shit hits the fan

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