In the last 10 years, progress in the drive to reduce hunger has been slow and has been scattered around the world. According to the global hunger statistic, in the Asian, African and Latin American countries, over 500 million people are living in what the World has called "absolute poverty", along with the fact 15 million children die of hunger every year. (Shah, Global Food Crisis 2008). The world therefore still faces a fundamental food security challenge. Despite the steadily falling fertility rates, world’s population keeps increasing – and eventually will raise the demand of food. But as science develops, many biotechnologies have been generated to overcome the issue. Alternative farming can play a vital role in defeating world’s hunger because of its effectiveness as it increases long term soil fertility, ensuring decrease in price while producing food of higher nutritional quality at sufficient quantity.
Put simply, alternative farming is an agricultural system that seeks for techniques to achieve crops yields while respecting natural life-cycle systems. Different from the conventional farming methods, alternative farming’s farmers do not only use the basic farming methods but as well combining them with modern scientific knowledge, along with all the materials that are available. (HDRA, What is Alternative Farming). For plants, grains specifically, they need water and nutrients from soil to develop. Therefore, building good soil structure and plant fertility can assuage the food crisis by helping plants grow rapidly while making sure the products maintain high quality. By composing the already supplied material such as leaves, fruit skin to make composer, farmers already save a good amount of money for other purposes, s...
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The book The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, by Wayne Roberts introduces us to the concept of “food system”, which has been neglected by many people in today’s fast-changing and fast-developing global food scene. Roberts points out that rather than food system, more people tend to recognize food as a problem or an opportunity. And he believes that instead of considering food as a “problem”, we should think first and foremost about food as an “opportunity”.
The amount of foodstuffs produced by organic farms does not meet the demand of the population, which is the main objective of farming. Observing the United States of America alone and using myself as the average American we
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The organic food market tipped during the early 1980s, before Whole Foods Market ever existed. However, the organic farming concept occurred in England 40 years before it tipped in the United States. After years of agricultural research’s experiences and observations, Sir Albert Howard gradually evolved a philosophy and a concept of organic farming (Heckman, 2006). Organic farming was about recycling crops and livestock back to the soil in order to escalate soil fertility. This method quickly spread in Europe; however, it was not until USDA published Report and Recommendation on Organic Farming then brought significant appreciation to the United States. In 1980’s, several policies such as the Organic Foods Producti...
There are many problems confronting our global food system. One of them is that the food is not distributed fairly or evenly in the world. According “The Last Bite Is The World’s Food System Collapsing?” by Bee Wilson, “we are producing more food—more grain, more meat, more fruits and vegetables—than ever before, more cheaply than ever before” (Wilson, 2008). Here we are, producing more and more affordable food. However, the World Bank recently announced that thirty-three countries are still famine and hungers as the food price are climbing. Wilson stated, “despite the current food crisis, last year’s worldwide grain harvest was colossal, five per cent above the previous year’s” (Wilson, 2008). This statement support that the food is not distributed evenly. The food production actually increased but people are still in hunger and malnutrition. If the food were evenly distributed, this famine problem would’ve been not a problem. Wilson added, “the food economy has created a system in w...
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The definition of conventional farming is “Intensive farming or intensive agriculture as an agricultural production system characterized by a low fallow ratio and the high use of inputs such as capital, labor, or heavy use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers relative to land area.” Conventional farming is the method that a majority of farmers use. Although they have to use a lot more chemicals and fertilizers, conventional farming is cheaper than organic farming. Conventional farming has significantly higher crop yields than organic thus, producing more money, making it much more farmer friendly. Conventional farmers also use genetically engineered seeds that are sometimes referred to as “miracle seeds” because of their ability to fight against certain diseases or produce higher yields. The technical term for these seeds is HYV’s or high yield varieties (Qaim). Conventional farming also incorporates the use...
We live in a world that is constantly changing and advancing thanks to technological advancements, especially in the field of molecular genetics. Today, we are discovering and implementing new ways to overcome the ill-fated symptoms developed as a result from poor health or accidents. We are also making advancements in the field of agriculture thanks to molecular genetics. As we all know, food is an essential entity in our lives and is abundant as well as relatively easy to obtain here in the United States. However, as good as it may sound, this is not necessarily true for developing countries. Many people in developing countries receive very little food, if any, due to its scarcity. It is estimated that in Asia alone, close to 800 million people go to bed hungry every night due to food shortage. This problem can be alleviated by turning to the production of genetically modified organisms (a.k.a. GMOs).
Sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals--environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity. A variety of philosophies, policies and practices have contributed to these goals. People in many different capacities, from farmers to consumers, have shared this vision and contributed to it.
Organic agriculture is the oldest form of agriculture on our planet. Until post World War II, farming without harmful petroleum based sources was the only way of farming. There were no hazardous fertilizers and pesticides made from petroleum based products. During World War II many agricultural technologies were created. For example, ammonium used for munitions during World War II evolved into nitrate fertilizer and organophosphate production led to the creation of strong insecticides. These technical advances have resulted in economic gains at the cost of severe environmental and social consequences.
Agriculture is one of the most ancient forms of art and science that ties human development and well-being to natural resources and ecosystems. (Fritz J. Häni, 2007) Sustainable Agriculture is the production of food, fibre, plant and animal products using farming techniques that protect the environment, public health, human communities and animal welfare. (Sustainable Agriculture - The Basics, 2015) Sustainable agriculture is an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site – specific application that over the long term will:
After almost a century of neglect, organic farming is now finding place in the mainstream of development and shows great promise commercially, socially and environmentally. While there is continuum of thought from earlier days to the present, the modern organic movement is radically different from its original form. It now has environmental sustainability and productivity at its core, in addition to the founders concerns for healthy soil, healthy food and healthy people. Based on the technique of organic farming, it utilizes organic wastes such as the remains of plants, animals as well as farm wastes and aquatic wastes; including other biological materials, mostly produced insitu along with beneficial microbes (biofertilizers) to release nutrients to crops, which connotes the ‘organic’ nature of organic farming. For clarity purposes, Organic Farming (OF) is different from Certified Organic Farming (COF). While OF employs the understanding and knowledge of naturally occurring process through the relationship with the environment, COF includes the checks and balances to maintain soil fertility and the control of insect, pest and diseases based on commercial quality control and marketing mechanism (NHM, 2015). Within the philosophy of organic farming, all aspects of farming system are interlinked with each other and rely on each other through organic management. This is obvious from the web relationship explained thus: A healthy biologically active soil is the source of crop nutrition, on-farm biodiversity controls pests, crop rotation and multiple cropping maintains the system’s health and on-farm resource management with integration of animal husbandry ensure