Sustainable Farming Explained: What Is Sustainable Agriculture?

Sustainable farming and sustainable agriculture are umbrella terms for food production systems that promote biodiversity and stewardship of natural resources over profitability. Sustainable farming includes practices that improve soil fertility, land utilization, and water quality.

Although these sustainable operations are typically small-scale and less profitable than their commercial counterparts, their practices reduce the environmental impact of food production and enhance the balance between humans and local ecosystems.

Sustainable agriculture practices offer incentives, such as water conservation, the improvement of local food independence, the reduction of an operation’s carbon footprint, and the overall promotion of environmental sustainability, among others.

1. 1. Crop rotation: Farmers who practice crop diversity do so to help ensure they are not depleting the soil quality of the same nutrients from growing season to growing season. Rotating crops can also disrupt disease and pest cycles. Additionally, growers who plant cover crops like clover, alfalfa, and rye can maintain and replenish soil health by reducing topsoil erosion, conserving water use, and trapping nitrogen and other essential nutrients during the off-season.
2. 2. Holistic landscape management: By reducing tillage and other staples of commercial farming operations, sustainable agricultural systems can improve soil fertility and develop land use solutions that accommodate a natural balance in local ecosystems. Growers who adopt agroforestry and organic farming systems can create a sustainable environment for animals, plants, and food crops to grow and flourish together.
3. 3. Livestock integration: The introduction of chickens, goats, geese, and pollinators can improve biological diversification and increase farm production. Goats, chickens, and sheep can provide farming families with milk, eggs, and, eventually, meat. These farm animals can also live free-range lives, often feeding on invasive weeds and predatory insects that might harm crops.
4. 4. Natural pest management: Subscribers of sustainable farming develop alternative pest reduction strategies that reduce or eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. These synthetic chemicals remain in the produce or pollute local waterways through runoff. In an integrated pest management strategy, sustainable farmers can use the animal production of waste and other organic matter for fertilizer.
5. 5. Renewable energy: Farms can reduce their environmental impact by switching from fossil fuels and the local power grid to renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectric, solar, and wind energy production.
6. 6. Water quality control: Most crops in our current food system require significant water resources to bring produce to edible maturity. Even meat producers consume unsustainable levels of water through feed and other inputs. This management of resources and lack of accountability has led to decreased economic equity, drought, and a severe threat to the public health and financial well-being of rural communities near commercial farms.

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