Sustainability has been preached for a long time but have we been implementing its notion to its full potential? An idea so abstract, an approach so far-reaching brought up to alter and reconstruct our world can be explored to an unfathomable depth and can be transformed and remodeled into so much more. Adopting sustainability in the agricultural sector can prove to be highly advantageous.
Some unconventional ways to promote sustainable farming include ocean farming, crop rotation, permaculture, cover crops, polyculture farming, and no-till farming.
No-till farming is an agricultural tactic, which doesn’t involve tilling of the soil during the process of cultivation of land. It permits the earth to remain unscathed and shields the soil by leaving crop residue on the soil surface. This penny-pinching procedure results in conservation of water, less herbicide runoff, and bestows higher crop yields.
Despite the process being time-consuming, requiring more herbicides, and having an elevated threat of fungal diseases, it is rapidly gaining popularity.
However, the initial cost of the no-till equipment, and the reluctance of people to learn about it hinder the path to propagate this type of farming. No-till farming has been practiced for years by farmers in Central America, South America, and Ohio. Initially, no-till was most successful on sloping, well-drained soils, then with improvements to the system, it included cover crops, and slowly became more widely adopted on all soil types.
Some of its advantages are that it reduces soil erosion and wastage of soil, reduces the compaction and water loss by runoff. It also involves the addition of organic matter to the ground thereby increasing the topsoil’s quality.
Each tactic to make sustainability a way of living seems to have its own pros and cons, but what holds importance in deciding whether a method should be adopted or not is that its benefits should overshadow its drawbacks. Because in the end, every road has it’s roadblocks, how we overcome these roadblocks and decide whether we will reach our destination or not or in this case “make our globe green again?”.