Organic vs. Sustainable Agriculture

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Organic vs. Sustainable Agriculture

Agriculture, to many is just an industry of farmers and cows. Most people can’t even come close to fathom just how essential the continuance of agriculture is to not just our well being, but our very lives. People of the United States have been spoiled, they’ve never had to worry about the grocery stores running empty because, even to this day, there hasn’t been a problem growing enough to feed, not only the U.S. but a good part of the world too. The day though is fast approaching that we won’t be able to keep those grocery stores stocked. Due to the depletion of the vital resources, needed to produce our food, it is becoming increasingly challenging for today’s agriculturalists to feed the world. The only way to be able to keep up with the exponentially growing population and shrinking resource base, is to radically change how we produce our food or we will be looking at a huge crisis in the very near future. From this, need of new farming and production techniques, comes a couple new practices that will be discussed in this publication. One is sustainable, and the other is organic crop production. In the following, both practices will be discussed in detail hopefully clearing the air on which practice, in the long run should be the path production agriculture takes.

Organic Agriculture, as defined by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB): “Is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain, and enhance ecological harmony.” Which is very fancily put for agriculture with as little man made input as poss...

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...perations future sustainability.

Sources

Brodt, S, Feenstra, G, Kozloff, R, Klonsky, K, Tourte, L. (2006). Farmer –community connections and the future of ecological agriculture in California. Agriculture and Human Values, 23,75-88.

Fouche, C, Tourte, L, Gaskell, M, Smith, R, Koike, S, T. Mitchell, J. (2006) Organic Certification, Farm Planning, Management, and Marketing. Publication #7247, 1-6

Earles, R, Williams, P. (2005) Sustainable Agriculture: An introduction. Retrieved October 22, 2006, from http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/sustagintro.pdf

Gegner, L, Kueper, G. (2004) Organic Crop Production Overview. Retrieved October 22, 2006, from http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/organiccrop.pdf

Pimentel, D. (2005) Environmental, energetic, and economic comparisons of organic and conventional farming systems. Bioscience, v. 55, no. 7, 573-579

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