Some scientists question the safety of biotechnology as a panacea; agroecologists Miguel Altieri and Peter Rosset have enumerated ten reasons [] why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment, or reduce poverty. Based on evidence from previous attempts, there is a likely lack of transferability of one type of GM crop from one region to another. For example, modified crops that have proven successful in Asia from the Green Revolution have failed when tried in regions of Africa.
There is also a drastic lack of education given to governments, farmers, and the community about the science behind GM crops, as well as suitable growing practices. In most relief programs, farmers are given seeds with little explanation and little attention is paid to the resources available to them or even laws that prohibit them from distributing produce.
Governments are often not advised on the economic and health implications that come with growing GM crops, and are then left to make judgments on their own. Because they have so little information regarding these crops, they usually shy away from allowing them or do not take the time and effort required to regulate their use. Members of the community that will then consume the produce from these crops are also left in the dark about what these modifications mean and are often scared off by their 'unnatural' origins. This has resulted in failure to properly grow crops as well as strong opposition to the unknown practices.
A study published in June evaluated the status of the implementation of Golden Rice , which was first developed in the s to produce higher levels of Vitamin A than its non-GMO counterparts. This strain of rice was designed so that malnourished women and children in third world countries who were more susceptible to deficiencies could easily improve their Vitamin A intake levels and prevent blindness, which is a common result.
Golden Rice production was centralized to the Philippines, yet there have been many hurdles to jump in order to get production moving.
Food security - Wikipedia
The study showed that the project is far behind schedule and is not living up to its expectations. Although research on Golden Rice still continues, the country has moved forward with other non-GMO initiatives to address the Vitamin A deficiency problem which is so prevasive in that region. Livestock biodiversity is also threatened by the modernization of agriculture and the focus on more productive major breeds. Therefore, efforts have been made by governments and non-governmental organizations to conserve livestock biodiversity through strategies such as Cryoconservation of animal genetic resources.
Common GM crops include cotton, maize, and soybeans, all of which are grown throughout North and South America as well as regions of Asia. One of the biggest threats to rice, which is a staple food crop especially in India and other countries within Asia, is blast disease which is a fungal infection that causes lesions to form on all parts of the plant.
The latter can be helpful in extreme climates with little arable land and also decreases deforestation, as fewer trees need to be cut down in order to make room for crop fields. This addresses various health concerns associated with such pesticides and can also work to improve biodiversity within the area in which these crops are grown. In a review of Borlaug's publication entitled Ending world hunger: GM crops are as natural and safe as today's bread wheat, opined Dr. Borlaug, who also reminded agricultural scientists of their moral obligation to stand up to the antiscience crowd and warn policy makers that global food insecurity will not disappear without this new technology and ignoring this reality global food insecurity would make future solutions all the more difficult to achieve.
The body of scientific evidence concluding that GM foods are safe to eat and do not pose environmental risks is wide. The UN Millennium Development Goals are one of the initiatives aimed at achieving food security in the world. The first Millennium Development Goal states that the UN "is to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty" by This approach emphasizes the physical availability of food; the social, economic and physical access people have to food; and the nutrition, safety and cultural appropriateness or adequacy of food.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated in The State of Food Insecurity in the World that countries that have reduced hunger often had rapid economic growth, specifically in their agricultural sectors. These countries were also characterized as having slower population growth , lower HIV rates, and higher rankings in the Human Development Index. In The State of Food Insecurity in the World , the FAO restated its focus on economic growth and agricultural growth to achieve food security and added a focus on the poor and on "nutrition-sensitive" growth.
For example, economic growth should be used by governments to provide public services to benefit poor and hungry populations. The FAO also cited smallholders, including women, as groups that should be involved in agricultural growth to generate employment for the poor. For economic and agricultural growth to be "nutrition-sensitive", resources should be utilized to improve access to diverse diets for the poor as well as access to a safe water supply and to healthcare. Development approaches include investing in rural markets and rural infrastructure. To obtain short-term food security, vouchers for seeds, fertilizer , or access to services could promote agricultural production.
The use of conditional or unconditional food or cash transfers was another approach the FAO noted. Conditional transfers could include school feeding programs , while unconditional transfers could include general food distribution, emergency food aid or cash transfers. A third approach is the use of subsidies as safety nets to increase the purchasing power of households. The FAO stated that "approaches should be human rights-based, target the poor, promote gender equality, enhance long-term resilience and allow sustainable graduation out of poverty.
The FAO noted that some countries have been successful in fighting food insecurity and decreasing the number of people suffering from undernourishment. Bangladesh is an example of a country that has met the Millennium Development Goal hunger target. The FAO credited growth in agricultural productivity and macroeconomic stability for the rapid economic growth in the s that resulted in an increase in food security.
Irrigation systems were established through infrastructure development programs. Two programs, HarvestPlus and the Golden Rice Project, provided biofortified crops in order to decrease micronutrient deficiencess. On this day, the FAO hosts a variety of event at the headquarters in Rome and around the world, as well as seminars with UN officials. In particular, the WFP provides food aid to refugees and to others experiencing food emergencies.
It also seeks to improve nutrition and quality of life to the most vulnerable populations and promote self-reliance. In April , the Food Assistance Convention was signed, the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May Copenhagen Consensus recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending.
They put this ahead of other priorities, like the fight against malaria and AIDS. The main global policy to reduce hunger and poverty are the recently approved Sustainable Development Goals. In particular Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets globally agreed targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture by The United States Agency for International Development USAID proposes several key steps to increasing agricultural productivity which is in turn key to increasing rural income and reducing food insecurity.
8 528,53 RUB
Since the s, the U. According to Tim Josling, a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University , food stamps or other methods of distribution of purchasing power directly to consumers might fit into the range of international programs under consideration to tackle food insecurity. There are strong, direct relationships between agricultural productivity, hunger, poverty, and sustainability.
Three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas and make their living from agriculture.
Покупки по категориям
Hunger and child malnutrition are greater in these areas than in urban areas. Moreover, the higher the proportion of the rural population that obtains its income solely from subsistence farming without the benefit of pro-poor technologies and access to markets , the higher the incidence of malnutrition. Therefore, improvements in agricultural productivity aimed at small-scale farmers will benefit the rural poor first. Food and feed crop demand is likely to double in the next 50 years, as the global population approaches nine billion. Growing sufficient food will require people to make changes such as increasing productivity in areas dependent on rainfed agriculture ; improving soil fertility management; expanding cropped areas; investing in irrigation ; conducting agricultural trade between countries; and reducing gross food demand by influencing diets and reducing post-harvest losses.
- Can God Help Me If I Am Surrounded By Enemies? (Christian Sermons Book 5).
- Embedded Microcontroller Interfacing: Designing Integrated Projects: 65 (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering)!
- Sustainable agriculture - Wikipedia.
- kakikae (Japanese Edition)?
- Navigation menu;
- CRAIGSLIST! THE CA$H MACHINE!?
According to the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture , a major study led by the International Water Management Institute IWMI , managing rainwater and soil moisture more effectively, and using supplemental and small-scale irrigation, hold the key to helping the greatest number of poor people.
It has called for a new era of water investments and policies for upgrading rainfed agriculture that would go beyond controlling field-level soil and water to bring new freshwater sources through better local management of rainfall and runoff. With more money, farmers are more likely to diversify production and grow higher-value crops, benefiting not only themselves but the economy as a whole. Researchers suggest forming an alliance between the emergency food program and community-supported agriculture , as some countries' food stamps cannot be used at farmer's markets and places where food is less processed and grown locally.
The minimum annual global wheat storage is approximately two months. Insurance is a financial instrument, which allows exposed individuals to pool resources to spread their risk. They do so by contributing premium to an insurance fund, which will indemnify those who suffer insured loss. Insurance can be designed to protect many types of individuals and assets against single or multiple perils and buffer insured parties against sudden and dramatic income or asset loss.
Crop insurance is purchased by agricultural producers to protect themselves against either the loss of their crops due to natural disasters. Two type of insurances are available: In particular in poor countries facing food security problems, index-based insurances offer some interesting advantages: An advantage of index-based insurance is that it can potentially be delivered at lower cost.
A significant barrier that hinders uptake of claim-based insurance is the high transaction cost for searching for prospective policyholders, negotiating and administering contracts, verifying losses and determining payouts. Index insurance eliminates the loss verification step, thereby mitigating a significant transaction cost. A second advantage of index-based insurance is that, because it pays an indemnity based on the reading of an index rather than individual losses, it eliminates much of the fraud, moral hazard and adverse selection, which are common in classical claim-based insurance.
A further advantage of index insurance is that payments based on a standardized and indisputable index also allow for a fast indemnity payment. The indemnity payment could be automated, further reducing transaction costs. Basis risk is a major disadvantage of index-based insurance. It is the situation where an individual experiences a loss without receiving payment or vice versa. Basis risk is a direct result of the strength of the relation between the index that estimates the average loss by the insured group and the loss of insured assets by an individual.
The weaker this relation the higher the basis risk. High basis risk undermines the willingness of potential clients to purchase insurance. It thus challenges insurance companies to design insurances such as to minimize basis risk. The Food Justice Movement has been seen as a unique and multifaceted movement with relevance to the issue of food security. It has been described as a movement about social-economic and political problems in connection to environmental justice , improved nutrition and health, and activism. Today, a growing number of individuals and minority groups are embracing the Food Justice due to the perceived increase in hunger within nations such as the United States as well as the amplified effect of food insecurity on many minority communities, particularly the Black and Latino communities.
An example of a prominent organization within the food justice movement has been the Coalition of Immokalee Workers , which is a worker-based human rights organization that has been recognized globally for its accomplishments in the areas of human trafficking, social responsibility and gender-based violence at work. The Coalition of Immoaklee Workers most prominent accomplishment related to the food justice space has been its part in implementing the Fair Food Program which increased the pay and bettered working conditions of farm workers in the tomato industry who had been exploited for generations.
This accomplishment provided over 30, workers more income and the ability to access better and more healthy foods for themselves and their families. Another organization in the food justice space is the Fair Food Network, an organization that has embraced the mission of helping familIes who need healthy food to gain access to it while also increasing the livelihoold for farmers in America and growing local economies.
Started by Oran B. Bees and other pollinating insects are currently improving the food production of 2 billion small farmers worldwide, helping to ensure food security for the world's population. Research shows that if pollination is managed well on small diverse farms, with all other factors being equal, crop yields can increase by a significant median of 24 percent. How animal pollinators positively affect fruit condition and nutrient content is still being discovered.
As of [update] the concept of food security has mostly focused on food calories rather than the quality and nutrition of food. The concept of nutrition security evolved over time.
- ?
- ?
- .
- ;
- Machiavellis Principe - Virtù und Fortuna (German Edition)!
- Abdos en 7 Minutes Chrono, Programme Homme (Remise en Forme Chrono t. 1) (French Edition).
- Ideal, The (LIdeal).
In , it has been defined as "adequate nutritional status in terms of protein, energy, vitamins, and minerals for all household members at all times". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Not to be confused with Food safety. Food security in Mexico. Hunger in the United States. Feed the Future Initiative.
Land degradation and Desertification. Climate change and agriculture. Agriculture and petroleum and Peak oil's effects on agriculture. Agricultural policy of the United States. Gender and food security. Sustainable development portal Hunger relief portal Food portal Globalization portal. Retrieved 17 Jan Retrieved 26 October Measuring Household Food Security". Retrieved June 8, Archived from the original PDF on 4 November Retrieved 1 November The multiple dimensions of food security" PDF.
Retrieved 26 November Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The right to adequate food. The Journal of Nutrition. Archived from the original on Retrieved 31 July Archived from the original on 31 July Coping strategies in an informal settlement in the Vaal Triangle, South Africa". Can an indicator based on localized coping behaviors be used to compare across contexts? Archived from the original PDF on 21 October Retrieved 21 October Retrieved November 13, Retrieved 2 November Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
Retrieved 27 September Retrieved 15 December Retrieved 12 July Retrieved 15 October Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Agriculture, food and nutrition for Africa: Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department. The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People". Increasing Self-sufficiency in Traditional Food". Review of Agricultural Economics. International Food Policy Research Institute. Environmental Science and Policy. Lessons from Uttar Pradesh". The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, — Europe, America, and the Third World. Archived from the original on July 8, Archived from the original on 1 April Retrieved 18 March Challenge of the 21st Century" PDF.
Archived from the original on July 13, Archived from the original PDF on June 22, Social vulnerability and ecological fragility: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication, www. A prioritised crop wild relative inventory to help underpin global food security. Retrieved 31 January Retrieved 20 June Directed by Valentin Thurn.
Produced by Leigh Hoch. Why not Wasting Food is Important". Retrieved January 26, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Retrieved July 3, Retrieved June 3, Retrieved December 16, Retrieved 13 June The New York Times. Science of the Total Environment. The tragic consequences of climate change for the world's children:: April 29, Journal of Applied Research on Children.
Retrieved October 6, Full Plates, Full Potential. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The state of food and agriculture women in agriculture: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines". Agriculture and Human Values.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Growing Around the World". The Plant Health Instructor. Consumer acceptance of cisgenic rice in India". Asian Biotechnology and Development Review. Science and Engineering Ethics. Are there any Risks? EU Commission press briefing, 9 October A guide for everyone.
Retrieved 11 November Retrieved 22 October Retrieved 31 October Archived from the original on 13 December Ending hunger and undernutrition. An ambitious development goal: Ending hunger and undernutrition by In Global food policy report. Marble, Andrew and Fritschel, Heidi. Africa's Renewed Partnership to End Hunger by Accessed on 1 November Water for food, Water for life: Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Progress in Development Studies. American Journal of Public Health. Retrieved 7 September The key to food security. Deprivation and poverty indicators. Poverty and Violence Disability and poverty Food insecurity. Malnutrition Priority review voucher. Underprivileged area score Department of Environment Index. Environment portal Category Commons Organizations. Biocapacity Optimum population Overpopulation Malthusian catastrophe Population Population ethics Population momentum Sustainable development Women's reproductive rights Zero population growth.
Family planning Pledge two or fewer Human population planning One-child policy Two-child policy Population biology Population decline Population density Physiological density Population dynamics Population growth Population model Population pyramid Projections of population growth. Deforestation Desalination Desertification Environmental impact of agriculture of aviation of biodiesel of concrete of electricity generation of the energy industry of fishing of irrigation of mining of off-roading of oil shale industry of palm oil of paper of the petroleum industry of reservoirs of shipping of war Industrialisation Land degradation Land reclamation Overconsumption Pollution Quarrying Urbanization Loss of green belts Urban sprawl Waste Water scarcity Overdrafting.
Energy is used all the way down the food chain from farm to fork. In industrial agriculture, energy is used in on-farm mechanisation, food processing, storage, and transportation processes. The International Energy Agency projects higher prices of non-renewable energy resources as a result of fossil fuel resources being depleted.
It may therefore decrease global food security unless action is taken to 'decouple' fossil fuel energy from food production, with a move towards 'energy-smart' agricultural systems including renewable energy.
Socioeconomic aspects of sustainability are also partly understood. Regarding less concentrated farming, the best known analysis is Netting's study on smallholder systems through history. Given the finite supply of natural resources at any specific cost and location, agriculture that is inefficient or damaging to needed resources may eventually exhaust the available resources or the ability to afford and acquire them. It may also generate negative externality , such as pollution as well as financial and production costs.
There are several studies incorporating these negative externalities in an economic analysis concerning ecosystem services, biodiversity, land degradation and sustainable land management. These include The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study led by Pavan Sukhdev and the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative which seeks to establish an economic cost benefit analysis on the practice of sustainable land management and sustainable agriculture.
The way that crops are sold must be accounted for in the sustainability equation. Food sold locally does not require additional energy for transportation including consumers. Food sold at a remote location, whether at a farmers' market or the supermarket , incurs a different set of energy cost for materials, labour , and transport. Pursuing sustainable agriculture results in many localized benefits. Having the opportunities to sell products directly to consumers, rather than at wholesale or commodity prices, allows farmers to bring in optimal profit.
Triple bottom line frameworks including social and environmental aspects alongside the financial show that a sustainable company can be technologically and economically feasible. For this to happen, growth in material consumption and population need to be slowed down and there has to be a drastic increase in the efficiency of material and energy use.
To make that transition, long- and short-term goals will need to be balanced enhancing equity and quality of life. What grows where and how it is grown are a matter of choice. Two of the many possible practices of sustainable agriculture are crop rotation and soil amendment , both designed to ensure that crops being cultivated can obtain the necessary nutrients for healthy growth. Soil amendments would include using locally available compost from community recycling centers.
These community recycling centers help produce the compost needed by the local organic farms. Using community recycling from yard and kitchen waste utilizes a local area's commonly available resources. These resources in the past were thrown away into large waste disposal sites, are now used to produce low cost organic compost for organic farming. Other practices includes growing a diverse number of perennial crops in a single field, each of which would grow in separate season so as not to compete with each other for natural resources. Nitrogen fixation from legumes, for example, used in conjunction with plants that rely on nitrate from soil for growth, helps to allow the land to be reused annually.
Legumes will grow for a season and replenish the soil with ammonium and nitrate, and the next season other plants can be seeded and grown in the field in preparation for harvest. Monoculture , a method of growing only one crop at a time in a given field, is a very widespread practice, but there are questions about its sustainability, especially if the same crop is grown every year. Today it is realized to get around this problem local cities and farms can work together to produce the needed compost for the farmers around them.
This combined with growing a mixture of crops polyculture sometimes reduces disease or pest problems [37] but polyculture has rarely, if ever, been compared to the more widespread practice of growing different crops in successive years crop rotation with the same overall crop diversity.
Such methods may also support sustainable weed management in that the development of herbicide-resistant weeds is reduced. Replacing a natural ecosystem with a few specifically chosen plant varieties reduces the genetic diversity found in wildlife and makes the organisms susceptible to widespread disease. The Great Irish Famine — is a well-known example of the dangers of monoculture.
In practice, there is no single approach to sustainable agriculture, as the precise goals and methods must be adapted to each individual case. There may be some techniques of farming that are inherently in conflict with the concept of sustainability, but there is widespread misunderstanding on effects of some practices. Today the growth of local farmers' markets offer small farms the ability to sell the products that they have grown back to the cities that they got the recycled compost from. This will help move people away from the slash-and-burn or slash-and-char techniques that are the characteristic feature of shifting cultivation.
These are often cited as inherently destructive, yet slash-and-burn cultivation has been practiced in the Amazon for at least years. There are also many ways to practice sustainable animal husbandry. Some of the key tools to grazing management include fencing off the grazing area into smaller areas called paddocks , lowering stock density, and moving the stock between paddocks frequently.
In light of concerns about food security , human population growth and dwindling land suitable for agriculture, sustainable intensive farming practises are needed to maintain high crop yields , while maintaining soil health and ecosystem services. The capacity for ecosystem services to be strong enough to allow a reduction in use of synthetic, non renewable inputs whilst maintaining or even boosting yields has been the subject of much debate. Soil steaming can be used as an ecological alternative to chemicals for soil sterilization.
Different methods are available to induce steam into the soil in order to kill pests and increase soil health. Solarizing is based on the same principle, used to increase the temperature of the soil to kill pathogens and pests. Certain crops act as natural biofumigants, releasing pest suppressing compounds.
Mustard, radishes, and other plants in the brassica family are best known for this effect. A farm that is able to "produce perpetually", yet has negative effects on environmental quality elsewhere is not sustainable agriculture. An example of a case in which a global view may be warranted is over-application of synthetic fertilizer or animal manures , which can improve productivity of a farm but can pollute nearby rivers and coastal waters eutrophication. The other extreme can also be undesirable, as the problem of low crop yields due to exhaustion of nutrients in the soil has been related to rainforest destruction, as in the case of slash and burn farming for livestock feed.
In Asia, specific land for sustainable farming is about In some cases even a small unit of aquaculture is also included in this number AARI Sustainability affects overall production, which must increase to meet the increasing food and fiber requirements as the world's human population expands to a projected 9. Increased production may come from creating new farmland, which may ameliorate carbon dioxide emissions if done through reclamation of desert as in Israel and Palestine , or may worsen emissions if done through slash and burn farming, as in Brazil.
As the Earth is entering the Anthropocene , an epoch characterized by human impacts such as climate change , agriculture and agricultural development are at risk. Agriculture has an enormous environmental footprint, and is simultaneously leading to huge amounts of environmental changes globally and being hugely impacted by these global changes. This is complicated by the fact that the Earth is undergoing rising amounts of environmental risks. Sustainable agriculture provides a potential solution to enable agricultural systems to feed a growing population while successfully operating within the changing environmental conditions.
In , the United Nations reported on " Organic Agriculture and Food Security ", [46] stating that using organic and sustainable agriculture could be used as a tool to reach global food security without expanding land usage and reducing environmental impacts. Another way to define sustainable agriculture is to give attention to the "human and environmental aspects," [46] because of the turn to a more unsustainable way of farming in U.
During the Great Depression in the United States many farming families were living in subhuman and hungry conditions and treated "sustainability as a resource-input and food-output equation. There has been evidence provided by developing nations from the early s stating that when people in their communities are not factored into the agricultural process that serious harm is done.
The social scientist Charles Kellogg has stated that, "In a final effort, exploited people pass their suffering to the land. For if something is sustainable, it should be that way in all aspects of it, not just the crop yield or soil health. It has been seen in the developing country of Bangladesh , the starving of rural farming communities due to their unsustainable farming methods. Sustainable agriculture mean the ability to permanently and continuously "feed its constituent populations.
Therefore, as a result of the banana crisis in Uganda caused by the BBW, the government issued the National Biotechnology and Biosafety bill which will allow scientists that are part of the National Banana Research Program to start experimenting with genetically modified organisms [48]. This effort has the potential to help local communities because a significant portion live off the food they grow themselves and it will keep their economy in check because their main sources of produce will remain stable.
In the past 30 years in the United States the number of women farm operators has tripled. Much of the growth is due to women farming outside the "male dominated field of conventional agriculture". With the change of laws in land ownership over the past century, women are now allowed all the same freedom of land ownership that men have. Sustainable agriculture has become a topic of interest in the international policy arena, especially with regards to its potential to reduce the risks associated with a changing climate and growing human population.
The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change , as part of its recommendations for policy makers on achieving food security in the face of climate change, urged that sustainable agriculture must be integrated into national and international policy. The Commission stressed that increasing weather variability and climate shocks will negatively affect agricultural yields, necessitating early action to drive change in agricultural production systems towards increasing resilience.
It also called for dramatically increased investments in sustainable agriculture in the next decade, including in national research and development budgets, land rehabilitation, economic incentives, and infrastructure improvement. Most agricultural professionals agree that there is a "moral obligation to pursue [the] goal [of] sustainability. Because if an unsustainable method is used on a large scale it will have a massive negative effect on the environment and human population.
The best way to create policy for agriculture is to be free of any bias. A good review would be done with "practical wisdom," [46] a virtue identified by Aristotle , distinguishing practical wisdom from scientific knowledge, this coming from Nichomachean Ethics. The science of agriculture is called " agronomy ", the root of this word relating to scientific law. Practical wisdom requires recognition of past failures in agriculture to better attain a more sustainable agricultural system. The use of available city space e.
Potential advantages include year-round production, isolation from pests and diseases, controllable resource recycling, and reduced transportation costs. Increasing threats of climate change have influenced cities and public offiials are thinking more proactively about the ways they can deliver services and food more efficiently.
The environmental cost of transportation could be avoided if people take back their connection to fresh food. The main debate on how sustainable agriculture might be achieved centers around two different approaches: The technocentric approach argues that sustainability can be attained through a variety of strategies, from the view that state-led modification of the industrial system like conservation-oriented farming systems should be implemented, to the argument that biotechnology is the best way to meet the increasing demand for food.
There are different scientific communities that are looking at the topic of sustainable agriculture through two separate lenses: While both of these frameworks are similar, they look at the function of agriculture in different lights. Those that employ the multifunctional agriculture philosophy focus on farm-centered approaches, and define function as being the outputs of agricultural activity. These additional functions include renewable natural resource management and conservation of landscape and biodiversity.
Since World War II, dominant models of agriculture in the United States and the entire national food system have been characterized by a focus on monetary profitability at the expense of social and environmental integrity. In sustainable agriculture, changes in lower rates of soil and nutrient loss, improved soil structure , and higher levels of beneficial microorganisms are not quick. In conventional agriculture the benefits are easily visible with no weeds, pests, etc. Many benefits are not visible, so they are often unknown.
Not all geographic regions lend themselves easily to sustainable agriculture. While all parts of the world with human population need food to survive, many of these places are located in climates that make food production difficult. In Nunavik, which is located in northern Canada, it was discovered that the sustainable agricultural development needed to provide its native population with better nutrition would be difficult to adopt due to the regions isolation and arctic climate.
The technological advancement of the past few decades have allowed access to these areas and the means to develop sustainable agriculture in some of these previously obstructed regions.
The implementation of greenhouses has been an effective method in overcoming the geographic barriers in certain parts of the world. For example, Nepal has implemented greenhouses to deal with its high altitude and mountainous regions.
Description
Desalination techniques have been developed to allow greater access to fresh water in areas that have historically had limited access. The desalination process turns salt water into fresh water and will allow the irrigation of crops to continue without making a harmful impact on the water supply. Efforts toward more sustainable agriculture are supported in the sustainability community, however, these are often viewed only as incremental steps and not as an end. Some foresee a true sustainable steady state economy that may be very different from today's: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article's lead section does not adequately summarize key points of its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page.