7 Major Practices of Sustainable Agriculture And Their Benefits

In this article we have discussed 7 practices of sustainable agriculture that are highly important for the betterment of agriculture productivity.

But before discussing the 7 practices of sustainable agriculture we will explain you what is sustainable agriculture, the benefits of sustainable agriculture and its overall importance.

Any one who is working in agriculture or related to agriculture field must know the 7 practices of sustainable agriculture to improve the agriculture life cycle, that is why we insist you on reading full article properly.

Sustainable Agriculture Definition, Benefits and Economic Importance

Learn about 7 Major Practices of Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is defined as farming in sustainable ways, carried out to meet society's present food and other basic needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their basic needs. It is based on an understanding of ecosystem services.

In other words, Sustainable agriculture is a kind of agriculture that mainly concentrates on producing long-term crops and livestock while having little effects on the environment. 

Harvesting the rainwater, No machinery to farm the land, growing crops according to seasons, Growing multiple crops at the same time. Permaculture is the need for today because it cares for the health of the three elements air, water and land.

So now you know what is sustainable agriculture, so let us explain why we need it so much.

The Need of Sustainable Agriculture

The practices of sustainable agriculture are critical and important for:

• feeding the expanding the population
• conserving and enhancing the environment and the resource base (land and water)
• reduce the farming related pollution
• make agriculture climate resilient
• make agriculture attractive to youth (future farmers)

 

At the beginning of the 21st century, agricultural scientists are facing their greatest challenge - one of meeting the increasing demand for food by intensifying agricultural production without harming the environment - while at the same time protecting or enhancing the resource base. 

At the same time we need to climate proof the farming and attract the youth to sustain farming in the near future and for that we need to maintain soil health, conserve resources, and protect the environmental integrity.

7 Major practices of sustainable agriculture

The 7 major practices of sustainable agriculture are described below in simple words so that you understand them fully.

1. Organic farming 

Organic farming is a method of crop and livestock production that involves much more than choosing not to use chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics and growth hormones.

2. Integrated pest management (IPM)

Integrated pest management (IPM), also known as integrated pest control (IPC) is a broad-based approach that integrates practices for economic control of pests. IPM aims to suppress the basic pest populations below the economic injury level (EIL).

Integrated pest management is defined as the selection, integration and implementation of pest control based on predicted economic, ecological and sociological consequences, makes maximum use of naturally occurring control agents, including weather, disease organisms, predators and parasites.

3. Integrated Nutrient Management 

Integrated Nutrient Management refers to the maintenance of soil fertility and plant nutrient supply at an optimum level for sustaining the desired productivity through optimization of the benefits from all possible sources of organic, inorganic and biological components in an integrated manner. 

4. Integrated Farming (IF) 

Integrated Farming is a whole farm management system which aims to deliver more sustainable agriculture. It is a dynamic approach which can be applied to any farming system around the world.

5. Crop rotation

The growing of different kinds of crops on a piece of land in a pre-planned succession is known as crop rotation. 

In the rotation of crops, leguminous crops like pulses, beans, peas, groundnut are sown in-between the seasons of cereal crops like wheat, maize and pearl millet. 

The leguminous plants are grown alternately with non-leguminous plants to restore the fertility of the soil. 

When the cereal crops like rice, wheat, maize are grown in the soil, it uses up a lot of nitrogenous salts from the soil. If another crop of cereal is grown in the same soil, the soil becomes nitrogen deficient. So by rotation a leguminous crop is grown. 

There plants have the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen to form nitrogen compounds through the help of certain bacteria present in their base root. These nitrogen compounds go into the soil and make it more good and fertile.

6. Integrated Crop Management (ICM) 

Integrated Crop Management is a common sense approach to farming. It combines the. best of traditional methods with appropriate modern technology, balancing the economic. production of crops with positive environmental management.

7. Mulching 

Mulching is the process of covering the ground to avoid soil erosion and maintain soil temperature and moisture. This process improves the overall production of crops and helps in their maintenance.

Best Example of Self Sustaining Agriculture Practice

As Agriculture is a practice of farming that produce food and other consumable items directly or indirectly through it, but a self sustaining farming is more of a direct approach only.

A self-sustaining agriculture practice involves

1. Use of no additional and harmful items that needs to be procured from outside the agricultural land.
2. Using all the necessary items required for the agriculture within the farm that can be directly used after some processing.

A simple example for it is using the resources we get from cow like stated below,

1. All farm cows give milk and calf's and we sell it for good money.
2. They give cow dung which can be used to produce the highly beneficial gobar gas which can be used to produce heat and other forms of energy.
3. Purified gobar gas can is used as alternative for petrol and is also sold outside.
4. Processed cowdung and it's urine are mainly used as fertilizers to grow the required crops for people and cows.
5. Thus coding helps avoid the use of outside manure
6. Crops can be rotated within the seasons thus providing important and necessary fixing of nitrogen and soil quality.
7. A lot more can be taken out of it, still it provides a self sustainable cycle.

Using the above mentioned 7 practices of sustainable agriculture can prove very highly beneficial for every farmer. 

 

Benefits of 7 practices of sustainable agriculture

Here are the major benefits of 7 practices of sustainable agriculture.

There are many basic advantages and may be there are too many to describe. But we have described some of the most important benefits .

So practices of sustainable agriculture helps us to ;

• build and improve soil health
• emit less amount of carbon to the atmosphere and can actually store the carbon stably in the soil, helping to mitigate climate change
• enhance overall water quality
• stop soil erosion
• deliver good, tasty, nutritious food
• treat animals humanely
• pay all workers fairly
• create environments where wildlife and human life can thrive
• make healthier, more prosperous communities and provide higher quality of life for farmers and for society as a whole.

This is all on 7 practices of sustainable agriculture, hope you find this article very useful, if you feel the need to add anything just comment down below.