Choosing what to eat is soon becoming a tough one, with people torn between eating what they produce on their farms while growing naturally or enhancing the growth of the products using fertilizers and pesticides. The food choice goes on to the livestock debate where farmers inject their farm animals, including poultry, with certain drugs to enhance their growth and make them bigger while fastening their growth process.
Despite all the arising debates on the type of food to be eaten, genetically modified organisms and agricultural additives are slowly gaining weight in the current world. However, farmers need to know that as much as there is a push for Americans to adopt sustainable agriculture, the drive is more beneficial to farmers than any other stakeholder in the agriculture sector. Farmers should adopt sustainable agriculture because it helps maintain the environment, increase food security, has economic benefits, and has health benefits to the consumers.
The benefits of sustainable agriculture are derived from its meaning which is to use agriculture in a way that is beneficial to the environment. The benefits are in addition to good public health of the community and providing the farmer with good returns on investment. Sustainable agriculture should therefore be carrying the current food security burden while avoiding a compromise for future generations.
By not using pesticides and fertilizers, different forms of pollution could contribute to climate change, thereby reducing the prospects for achieving food security. Fertilizers and pesticides have been found to cause contamination of groundwater, leading to contamination of the major sources of water the streams of groundwater flow to (Prasad, 2020). Instead of using chemical fertilizers, farmers can use nano fertilizers with abiotic tolerance (Zulfiqar et al., 2019). Therefore, nutrients will be released at a controlled rate, increasing the nutrient efficiency of the soil and preventing nutrient depletion.
The world is when climate change is threatening to derail the effects of sustainable development goals. Climate summit delegates had to go overtime and debate over the weekends to reach a consensus in the contemporary world. They felt that food security is slowly becoming a concern; only sustainable agriculture can achieve this. Agroforestry helps maintain the environment, while biodiversity in farming helps achieve sustainable levels of food security (Garibaldi et al., 2017).
Take the example of a ranch where animals are reared and at the same time corn and vegetable are farms are kept simultaneously. They have diversified to produce food that ensures self-sustenance such that the only thing they can source outside is veterinary services. With this mentality, farmers can help produce enough food to feed a majority of the American population and ensure they do not go hungry.
Sustainable agriculture is also beneficial to public health as it is free from synthetic food, which is dangerous to human health. Processed and fast food have been found to increase the prevalence of certain diseases in society. A study revealed that consumption of junk food is likely to expose people to cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and certain types of cancer (Fuhrman, 2018). In light of these revelations, there is no point in leaving healthy farm foods like vegetables produced in a garden farm to go and eat French fries. Potatoes can be planted in a kitchen garden and eaten fresh from the farms without being processed. All the diseases mentioned are of public health concern, and farmers should help avert such situations. The benefits are more of a general perspective than the farmers who are being urged to adopt this form of agriculture.
Everybody else is trying to save their skin, and they should check the benefits the farmers get from sustainable agriculture. Farmers should know that by opting for sustainable agriculture, the costs they incur in agriculture will be significantly reduced. The use of satellite imagery eliminates rarities such as unpredictable weather patterns that could have otherwise destroyed the crops and subjected the farmers to losses. In addition to that, farmers who practice crop rotation will not require fertilizers as the soil will be enriched with nutrients, and pests and diseases that would have affected seasoned crops prevented (Rosa-Schleich et al., 2019). Farmers would thus have more revenue than expenses they would have incurred had they used industrial agriculture due to its intensiveness in labor and cash resources.
In conclusion, sustainable agriculture is beneficial to society in several ways. Farmers experience reduced costs in their businesses since the venture is not labor and cash-intensive and also because they do not use fertilizers that they would have otherwise bought. Sustainable agriculture helps increase food security via biodiversity, ensuring a variety of food is produced from one focal point. Health-wise, eating food produced from sustainable agriculture reduces the general public’s risk of suffering from lifestyle diseases such as obesity and chronic illnesses such as cancer. Farmers should, therefore, embrace this form of agriculture for the benefit of the general population as climate change eats into all possible scenarios one could turn to for help.
References
Fuhrman, J. (2018). The hidden dangers of fast and processed food. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 12(5), 375-381. Web.
Garibaldi, L. A., Gemmill-Herren, B., D’Annolfo, R., Graeub, B. E., Cunningham, S. A., & Breeze, T. D. (2017). Farming approaches for greater biodiversity, livelihoods, and food security. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 32(1), 68-80. Web.
Prasad, M. N. (2020). Agrochemicals detection, treatment and remediation. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Rosa-Schleich, J., Loos, J., Mußhoff, O., & Tscharntke, T. (2019). Ecological-economic trade-offs of diversified farming systems – A review. Ecological Economics, 160, 251-263. Web.
Zulfiqar, F., Navarro, M., Ashraf, M., Akram, N. A., & Munné-Bosch, S. (2019). Nanofertilizer use for sustainable agriculture: Advantages and limitations. Plant Science, 289. Web.