How to Reach Sustainability

How to reach Sustainability

Today most farmers don’t have a sustainable way of producing food that can protect the environment. Most today use chemicals, or GMO’s that are very harsh to the soil and the surrounding environment. It effects everything.

            I believe that one of the key elements to reach agricultural sustainability is farming organic. No GMO’s, pesticides, or chemicals to help plants grow. In the movie “Symphony of the Soil” it discussed the importance of compost and using the natural resources around you to help sustain a healthy environment. For example in the movie we met a man from India who is a farmer and he uses everything he has on his farm to create compost and recycle it back into the earth. By using dung, plants and dirt he made compost. I believe that this can make a sustainable environment.

            Another way to reach agricultural sustainability I believe is by organic farming. A lot of GMO’s that are made are very harsh. They’re made to withstand animals, climate change, and survive with less water. This is great but then its not great. More than not most GMO’s are so harsh that after planting them over and over again the soil and dirt that it grew in is dead. It takes the water out of the soil and renders it useless. I believe that organic farming is a huge key to keep a healthy environment.  Everyone deserves to be treated with love and care and we are not treating our earth right by feeding it so many chemicals. Not only will organic farming treat our earth better but the food we produce and eat will be treating our bodies better as well.

            It is important to have synergy between our famers and the land. Treating the surrounding environment is critical because the way the world and everyone is treating the dirt and soil is horrible. We are already seeing the affects. Drying out the dirt and all the nutrients in the soil is not treating our earth right. We need to make changes in the way we buy food and by supporting the people who grow food the right way.

Creating a habit of Organic

The documentary "Symphony of the Soil" is a documentary that talks about soil and the importance of soil all over the world. They focused a lot on the connection between soil, water, and air. Those three components help each other out greatly and all over the world, the equation between these components are different meaning that the soil is different in different places around the world giving it the ability to grow certain plants and crops.

The film also focuses on the idea of farming this land and different problems that come from farming conventionally. Putting chemicals into the land to make the crops grow better helps in short term production to give the farmer a larger amount of money in their pocket. However, the chemicals add up creating long term buildup and problems that the soil will pay for in the future. The United States relies on conventional farming because this is the only solution that they see providing enough food to feed everyone. Americans are people who live through habit. We dont like to change our ways of doing things if it means more risks. One of the changes is organic farming. I am a huge advocate of organic farming because my family is very involved in it. My grandparents have multiple acreas of organic garden.

Organic farming has many advantages to the soil and atmosphere around it. Not having to till the land as much keeps erosion from happening, creating composte to put in the soil in replacement to the chemical furtilizaters, and putting healthier chemical free food into the people who consume it. Disadvantages to organic farming are the time and energy it takes to maintain it; It takes a little more work to produce, a little more time to produce, but the finishing product is worth it. The problem consumers have is that it is more expensive. Americans are very quick to pick out whatever is cheapest at the supermarket so organic foods dont receive the demand they should be. The habit hasnt been created yet.

In conclusion, I believe that organic farming could become a bigger deal in the world if the education is spread, the demand raises up enough to have more and more producers. The more producers, the cheaper it can become. Organic farming is a slow moving improvement that will improve the land, water, and atmosphere surrounding it. If the knowledge is spread on how to become an organic farmer, I believe it can create very positive improvements on the environment all over the world. The more people that do it, the more the habit will be created.

What else are we missing?

The film “Symphony of Soil” brings a few big topics to light. In the documentary the ideas of sustainable agriculture are discussed as well as our current agricultural problems we have been facing. Although some of our agricultural problems, such as droughts, are the result of climate change in general, there are more specific problems that have conventional farming written all over it. Things like erosion, compacted soil, exhausting undergrounds aquifers nitrogen and phosphorus saturated soil and water ways are some of the environmental issues we are effacing, issues that the film discusses, are all caused by conventional farming techniques. 

The documentary shows us that the things we deem as conventional farming are not the only way of doing things. People were finding ways to preserve water by growing other plants around their crops to prevent runoff. They were also composting and using the newly made, nutrient rich soil as a type of fertilizer that didn’t poison the soil or the crop. Rotating crops is also important as different plants take different amounts of each nutrient. Planting a cover crop such as clover is also important in the off season. All of this just shows us that organic farming, although more tedious and expensive, is achievable and can mitigate or even eliminate the negative aspects that conventional farming exhibit.

While the film just barely brushes on these topics and doesn’t get very technical, for the sake of the viewer, I think they are touching on an issue that is far reaching in almost every industry and field out there. I firmly believe that the way we are built, that is to say the way our minds work, is that when something becomes a norm for us or our culture we define it as the the supreme or even only way of doing something. We don’t often consider other techniques because the current ones have seemed to work (emphasis on the word seemed). Although globalization has changed this a great deal there are some things that aren’t being challenged enough. I believe industry hs driven agriculture to a breaking point where it is not sustainable anymore, but people think it is the only way of doing because conventional farming was once innovative, yielded huge crops amounts and saved money. So now that people rely on this technique for a living, it will be hard to turn to an alternative as it is seen as inadequate in one way or another. Hopefully this changes soon.

This makes me wonder, what else do we not question?