Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on sustainable agriculture
Essay on sustainable agriculture
Sustainability in agriculture essays
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essay on sustainable agriculture
The Old Order Amish and Wes Jackson’s natural systems both reflect the ideas of sustainability. Both alternatives rely on diversity that provide them with many advantages. It reduces the need for fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides because the wide variety of plants provide different benefits to help other plants. Plant diversity and manure from farm animals allows the farm to “rely…on local inputs to maintain necessary relationships and dynamics” (189). The farms the Amish and Jackson talk about are small and would allow for animals to live on the farm and benefit from it, whether it be harnessing their power for work or providing habitat. Both alternatives also rely less on machinery and more on human labor, shifting from nonrenewable
Although Leopold’s love of great expanses of wilderness is readily apparent, his book does not cry out in defense of particular tracts of land about to go under the axe or plow, but rather deals with the minutiae, the details, of often unnoticed plants and animals, all the little things that, in our ignorance, we have left out of our managed acreages but which must be present to add up to balanced ecosystems and a sense of quality and wholeness in the landscape.
General Lee said, to be a good soldier you must love the army, to be a good general you must be prepared to order the death of the thing you love, and therein lies the great trap of soldiering. When you attack you must hold nothing back." Thomas J. Jackson was both a good soldier and a good general. In the Mexican War he fought with all his heart for his country. When the Civil War came, he was a general. He never hesitated to send his men forward. He held nothing back. George McClellan also fought with all his heart for his country in the Mexican War. When the time came to send his men forward in the Civil War, he couldn’t do it. He loved the army to much to order its death.
The farm uses a cycle of animals, which include cows, chickens, turkeys, bunnies, and pigs, in order to keep the land fertile which allows for little use of external human made input. Polyface farm also takes hours of work everyday to upkeep unlike factory farms where it’s mostly automated. The farm also makes use of forested areas and other non-farmed resources, which forces them to protect that land from being cut down to receive those benefits. However, organic farming’s limiting factor is human population growth and the resources needed by the growing population.
In the year of 1824, tempers were flaring and insults were being exchanged as politicians argued over who would be the sixth president of the United States. John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were the two major candidates in the election. However, this would be an election that would be remembered in history for its unique result. Despite being the more popular candidate, Andrew Jackson would not become the president. The presidential election of 1824 is remembered as one of the most controversial elections to have ever occurred in the history of the United States.
On the topic of environmental impacts due to “industrial farming”, Bill McKibben and Blake Hurst share completely different perspectives. McKibben believes that industrial farming has simply left an unexcusable bad impact on the environment, saying that it is unethical and that the meat we eat is potentially killing our environment and us as well. McKibben states that “we should simply stop eating factory-farmed meat, and the effects on climate change would be one of the many benefits.” (page 201). McKibben addresses that the techno fixes brought in industrial farming are simply not enough to help our environment.
Three specific ways in which American expansion shaped the Jacksonian period was through the advancement of technology, by way of slavery, and the Indian Removal Act. Jackson used any political and economic means necessary in order to see American frontier regions expand across the nation. Jackson’s Indian Removal policy had some of the most important consequences and paved the way toward American expansion. In the beginning of the Jacksonian era, colonial Americans’ settlements had not yet extended far beyond the Atlantic seaboard, partly because bad roads and primitive technology limited their ability to expand, and because both hostile Indians and British imperial policy discouraged migration beyond Appalachian Mountains. However, all of this changed after Jackson was in office and American expansion was well underway.
Wendell Berry's book, Another Turn of the Crank, takes us well beyond the sustainability of agriculture as such. This is a book about community and, necessarily then, it is a book about economics. John Dewey wrote, "Natural associations are the conditions for the existence of a community, but a community adds the function of communication in which emotions and ideas are shared as well as joint undertakings engaged in. Economic forces have immensely widened the scope of associational activities. But it has done so largely at the expense of the intimacy and directness of communal group interests and activities." (Freedom and Culture, pp. 159-160) The context of the present discussion is the disappearance of agrarian communities throughout America and, hence, the death of agrarian culture. Forest culture has been another victim. Part of this story is about access to fresh, healthy foods and good local timber. But most of the story is about much more.
...Nora Haenn and Richard R. Wilk (2006). The Environment in Anthropology: A Reader in Ecology, Culture and Sustainable Living. Robert Netting (1993). Chapter 2: Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture. Stanford University Press.
Whether it is growing their own garden or going to a nearby farmerś market, eating and buying locally is superior for the consumer and the environment. When food is naturally grown, it is better for the environment."Almost everything the farm uses is grown on the farm. Almost all of the energy used to make the food comes from the sun. there are no pesticides, no artificial fertilizer, no pollution, and no extra waste. Everything is recycled" (Pollan 148/150). On Joel Salatin's farm, a local farm in Swoope, Virginia, they doesn't use as many chemicals, fertilizers, or pesticides as a standard industrial food systems. They mostly use natural fertilizers. For example, Joel has a rotation; every day, he moves his cows and chickens to a new pasture (Pollan 147-148). This way, the soil will be more fertile, and it will be in better, not worse, shape. "...My snack could have traveled 8,000 miles to get to my mouth... it takes a lot of energy for food to travel so far" (Vogel 6). For an Industrial food product to travel about 8,000 miles with pesticides and chemicals in it, it makes the pollution in the air worse. The more energy that we use, and the more pollution we create, the worse our future will be because trucks carrying meat and fruit from other cities and countries are worsening our environment by polluting it.Michael Pollan interviewed a few people that shop at Joel Salatin’s farm and one lady said “I drive 150 miles one way in order to
Agriculture is the science and practice of producing crops and livestock. The primary aim of agriculture is to use the land to produce more abundantly to feed and clothe the world at the same time protecting it from deterioration or misuse. Humans had to improve agriculture as they became more dependent on food, creating a solitary evolutionary connection between plants and animals (Campbell and Reece, 2001). In this day and age, so many people have forgotten the authentic premises of survival. It is easy for some to believe that the grocery stores produce food and clothing is produced by shopping centers. These inaccurate presumptions are being made due to the lack of knowledge of how agriculture truly works. There are also significant differences in the levels of understanding between rural and urban communities.
Phasing out animal agriculture and replacing it with stronger, safer plant cultivation would greatly reduce pollution released into the environment as animal waste, burning fossil fuels, and contaminated water runoff. The animal waste produced in factory farms is dumped into immense open-air lago...
With the exception of some indigenous cultures where hunting and gathering is practiced, agriculture has been humans' primary source of food production for thousands of years. As time has passed, humans have furthered their knowledge of how agricultural systems work. This has resulted in a modern agriculture backed by hundreds of years of scientific research that seeks to ever increase the amount of food produced by a given acreage of land. Yet while modern agriculture is becoming more focused on efficiently producing food, it is not being followed with sensitivity to how it affects the environment and even the health of soils under its own feet. Since food production is in essence a focused natural process (growth of specific plants and animals), it is intrinsically dependent on the natural world and its systems. Thus, as Jackson points out in the above quote, an agricultural system unconcerned with environmental health is ignoring its very foundations.
I often imagine sitting on my front porch looking out across my abundant gardens after a hard day’s work, taking pleasure in the little things. I would look out and see a bounty of fruits and vegetables. The cows would be roaming the fields. My ideal agricultural system would a biodynamic one. I would want to live close to the earth and feel sense of peace. Biodynamic agriculture is a diverse system that can help save our struggling food system in America. It is important for everyone to have a healthy functioning system that provides the highest quality goods.
Agriculture is one of the most ancient forms of art and science that ties human development and well-being to natural resources and ecosystems. (Fritz J. Häni, 2007) Sustainable Agriculture is the production of food, fibre, plant and animal products using farming techniques that protect the environment, public health, human communities and animal welfare. (Sustainable Agriculture - The Basics, 2015) Sustainable agriculture is an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site – specific application that over the long term will:
In conclusion I feel natural farming could play a major role in sustainable horticulture. It fits perfectly in the people, planet and profit philosophy. Natural farming focus is to farm in harmony with nature, producing food that is safe and healthy for all to eat and with lower overhead cost, generates a nice profit for the farmers. Although many challenges stand in the way of implementation of natural farming in the large scale, however I believe they can be overcome by investment, research and ingenuity of farmers.