Future of Farming

The Future of Farming As the world continues to develop and attempts to provide for the ever growing population, more and more land is being diminished, which will eventually destroy the topsoil due to the use of petroleum based fertilizers and other unnatural means of producing vegetation. As this challenge faces us, we will be forced to find other ways of supporting ourselves instead of relying on the farms we have today. It is important that we realize the importance of practicing sustainable farming while we still have the option to make a step in the right direction. Growers now try to produce as much food as possible, with the limited amount of land that they are allowed to cultivate. They over use fertilizers, which contain chemicals such as petroleum, that make the soil economically useless and dangerous to living organisms. Pesticides, which are also very harmful in the farming world and overused as well, cause much damage to crops everywhere. In a chapter from a book, The Long Emergency, Kunstler argues that we as Americans have been “eating” our sources of natural gas by the use of petroleum-based herbicides and pesticides and fertilizers made out of natural gases and if we continue to abuse these, we will be forced to reorganize entirely the way we produce our food (239). The top soil, which is the upper most layer of soil where the plants develop their roots and get nutrients, is also being destroyed at an alarming rate. The destruction of topsoil could be detrimental to farming because there are very few places left with available, fertile soil. One aspect of sustainable farming that could help to reduce the use of harmful fertilizers and pesticides is organic farming. According to Bengtsson, organic farming is a process that “operates without pesticides, herbicides, and inorganic fertilizers” and includes a more diverse crop rotation (263). This practice also increases biodiversity and species richness among crops, which will make

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