INTRODUCTION TO SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND ADVERSE EFFECTS OF MODERN HIGH- INPUT AGRICULTURE

 INTRODUCTION TO SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND ADVERSE EFFECTS OF MODERN HIGH- INPUT AGRICULTURE. 

Introduction

Over the history of human settlements on the planet earth, agriculture has transformed in tune with the growing population and its challenging needs. The transformation has been quite remarkable since the end of World War II. Food and fibre productivity spared up due to adoption of new technologies viz, HYV, from mechanization, increased fertilizer & pesticide use, specialized farming practices, water resource development & improved irrigation practices and Government policies that favored maximizing production. It was in the early 1960s, the Green Revolution took shape in developing countries, especially India. It led to the attainment of self- sufficiency in food grain production. This has been described by Donald plunkett (1993), scientific adviser to the CGIAR, as the greatest agricultural transformation in the history of humankind, and most of it has taken place during our lifetime. 

The change was brought about the rise of Science-based agriculture which permitted higher and more stable food production, ensuring food stability and security for a constantly growing world population’. A major problem was that these benefits have been poorly distributed’. Many people have missed out and hunger still persists in many parts of the world. Estimates by the FAO and WHO (1992) and the Hunger Project (1991) suggest that around 1 billion people in the world have diets that are ‘too poor to abstain the energy required for healthy growth of children and minimal activity of adults’. The causes are complex and it is not entirely the fault of overall availability of food. Nonetheless, the process of agricultural modernization has been an important contributing factor, in that the technologies have been more readily available to the better-off. Modern agriculture begins on the research station, where researchers have access to all i.e., necessary inputs of fertilizers, pesticides and labour at all the appropriate times. But when the package is extended to farmers, even the best performing farms cannot match the yields the researchers get. For high productivity per hectare, farmers, need access to the whole package – modern seeds, water, labour, capital or credit, fertilizers and pesticides. Many poorer farming households simply   cannot adopt the whole package. If one element is missing, the seed delivery system fails or the fertilizer arrives late, or there is insufficient irrigation water, then yields may not be much better than those for traditional varieties. Even if farmers want to use external resources, very often delivery systems are unable to supply them on time.Where production has been improved through these modern technologies, all too often there have been adverse environmental and social impacts in both the advanced and developing countries including India. These include the following: 

Adverse effects of modern high- input agriculture 

• Overuse of natural resources, causing depletion of groundwater, and loss of forests, wild habitats, and of their capacity to absorb water, causing waterlogging and increased salinity: 

• Contamination of the atmosphere by ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane and the products of burning, which play a role in ozone depletion, global warming and atmospheric pollution: 

• Contamination of food and fodder by residues of pesticides, nitrates and antibiotics. 

• Contamination of water by pesticides, nitrates, soil and livestock water, causing harm to wildlife, disruption of ecosystems and possible health problems in drinking water; 

• Build up of resistance to pesticides in pests and diseases including herbicide resistance in weeds 

• Damage of farm and natural resources by pesticides, causing harm to farm workers and public, disruption of ecosystems and harm to wildlife. 

• Erosion of genetic diversity – the tendency in agriculture to standardize and specialize by focusing on modern varieties, causing the displacement of traditional varieties and breeds: 

• New health hazards for workers in the agrochemical and food-processing industries Added to the above adverse effects, the increasing human as well as cattle population is imposing intense pressure on available natural resources. Accordingly, a challenge has emerged that required a newvision, holistic approaches for ecosystem management and renewed partnership between science and society. 

 In December 1983, the UN General Assembly established the World Commission on Environment and Development. In 1987, on 27 th of April, at the queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Prime Minister of Norway, Mrs. Brundtland, who is also the Chairman of the World Commission of Environment and development, released the publication of “ Our Common Future” by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) and said: “ Securing our common future will require new energy and openness, fresh insights, and an ability to look beyond the narrow bounds of national frontiers and separate Scientific disciplines. The young are better at such vision than we, who are too often constrained by the traditions of former, more fragmented World. We must tap their energy, their openness, their ability to see the interdependence of issues…” She suggests that we must adopt a new paradigm based on a completely new value system. “ Our generation has too often been willing to use the resources of the future to meet our own short- term goals. It is a debt we can never repay. If we fail to change our ways, these young men and women will suffer more than we, and they and their children will be denied their fundamental right to a healthy productive, life-enhancing environment.” Her speech made it clear that we are consuming resources, which must be transferred to the next generation. We must recognize that, because resources are limited, we need a sustainable way of life. Almost at the same time the realization of prime importance of staple food production for achieving food security for future generations has brought the concept of “Sustainable Agriculture” to the forefront and began to take shape in the following three points. 

1. The interrelatedness of all the farming systems including the 

farmer and the family. 

2. The importance of many biological balances in the system. 

3. The need to maximize desired biological relationships in the system and minimize the use of materials and practices that disrupt these 

relations.Sustainability of agricultural systems has become a global concern today and many definitions so Sustainable Agriculture have become availableavailable in the next article. 

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