What are some pros and cons of sustainable agriculture?
Image by wallyg
The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, a California certified farmers market operated by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA), is open every Tuesday and Saturday. Started as a one-time event in 1992, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market’s popularity led to the opening of a year-round market in May 1993.
Question by ditzydory: What are some pros and cons of sustainable agriculture?
I’m writing a paper on this subject, and I can find lot’s of pro’s for it, but not really very many for cons. So if you can find anything that is negative (and reasonable, something that makes sense, i mean) that would be incredible.
Thank you!
please include the source (url, etc) so that I can cite them, thanks!!
Add your own answer in the comments!
4 Responses to What are some pros and cons of sustainable agriculture?
Leave a Reply
Who could be against sustainable agriculture?
Realize though that some people try to define it to their own benefit. For instance organic organizations have tried to make sustainable equivalent to organic.
And some regulators have tried to impose regulations in the name of making agriculture sustainable.
The big problem is really, can you have sustainable agriculture in a nonsustainable society. Right now we in agriculture can pretty well continue as we are going for an estimated 500 years, with phosphorus deposits being the limitation. Cities, they can’t go as they are without constant inputs for even a couple of weeks. Cities aren’t very sustainable.
So why do people fly in planes to resorts and sit in their huge conference and proclaim we must have sustainable agriculture? Mostly money and politics. Agriculture is the closest thing we have to sustainable.
When some people say sustainable, they mean something rather primitive. I can remember sitting years ago at a conference with one fellow who had lots of disciples to his thoughts on sustainable agriculture. There was one thing in the way of making his nirvana possible. About 90 percent of the population in the US needed to be eliminated, more in other countries. I would consider that fairly negative myself.
But realize that sustainable agriculture doesn’t require that, just his religion that he called sustainable agriculture.
The only real cons comes when someone proclaims they have the answers and tries to impose it on others.
Marv
BigNorsk
December 11, 2011 at 5:41 am
The assumption of sustainability likely includes an assumption that the world will run out of fuel for tractors and fertilizer plants, and even the trucks to take the food to market.
Well, setting up to run with none of those aids may mean that we can no longer manage our 6 section farm. We might be able to convert it to ranching, but the production of food as a whole is likely to drop deeply.
That would be ok for farmers, but there might be food riots in the cities as the supermarkets run empty. Our farm machinery is heavily fuel dependent, so perhaps the people who build and sell it may be upset.
Because farms are being operated with very few workers now, it may be that converting farms to ranches would not displace that many workers. Of course if a farm stays in farming, it may require a lot more hand labor. And the market will have to pay for that. More reasons for riots in the cities, and those city people are not accustomed to stoop labor under the blazing sun. That to might cause riots before people resign themselves to doing that work because there will not be enough farmers to do it.
donfletcheryh
December 11, 2011 at 6:27 am
Philosophically there shouldn’t be any cons but then again, sustainable is just a concept and truthfully is unattainable. All systems have limiting factors. Sustainable ag. doesn’t prohibit chemical inputs necessarily but if your definition does exclude chemical inputs yield will be about 1/2 w/o chemical fertilizer. Less pollution, maybe but now you have to farm 2Xs as much acreage. virtually all the best suited land for ag. is already in production, the only bits that are not are in the Amazon basin. Given that the population is growing and isn’t going to stop, if you take away chemical inputs more land will be converted to production, these will be less ideal sites with lower fertility, more erosion prone and less consistent year to year yields. Not to mention all the cute and fuzzy wildlife that will be displaced.
All human management systems are more damaging than the natural state, which itself is not stagnant but degrades over time too.
Eric D Redd
December 11, 2011 at 6:40 am
http://www.ageducate.org/news/misconceptions.html
A very good source for getting the other side of the story can be obtained from the link above. This is an educational kit from the American Farm Bureau Federation dealing with many misconceptions about agriculture.
You will always be able to find lots of individuals and groups who have what they consider to be good ideas about where all the problems in the world come from as well as all the answers to these problems.
The truth is that modern agriculture is necessary to feed the world’s population. Our technological advances and highly productive management practices can be credited for the standard of living enjoyed by all those compaliners.
Sustainable agriculture would be nice. However, it would be quite difficult to achieve on a worldwide basis. One of the reasons, of course, is that of politics around the world. Even in the US we may never see widespread sustainable agriculture because our citizens are free to operate their businesses pretty much however they like. Freedom is good…but perhaps not for proponents of suatainable agriculture. The only way the US would become totally sustainable is if we were to become a communist country where the government makes all the decisions. And we have seen how well communism works, right?
The sustainable groups admit that it would be a long, painful process to convert to sustainable agriculture. Well, the average American farmer not only feeds about 123 of the world’s citizens, he also has to feed his own family. Just ask an auto worker in detroit to accept lower wages for a few years for the benefit of the planet. NO WAY!
Some sustainable pratices are good. And it is great that a few people are trying their hand at it. But please understand–not all sustainable practices are safer or more environmentally friendly than conventional practices. The link above will shed some light on this. Also, some of the information people are receiving about conventional agriculture is just not accurate. In the material provided by the link, it is logically proven that DDT did not cuse the problems experienced by the bald eagle population. This is one of many examples. Just read what it says about the heavy use of pesticides in organic farming.
Hope this helps with your paper.
nathan b
December 11, 2011 at 7:15 am