Environmental Sustainability in Practice

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

Industrial agriculture is the system of chemically intensive food production where very large farms grow a single-crop (monoculture) or house large animal production facilities. Intensive monoculture crops can be very damaging to the soil because they deplete nutrients and can further harm the environment with herbicides and insecticides. Industrial animal production has been criticized for use of drugs in animals and inhuman treatment of animals. However, one of the benefits is that large amounts of relatively inexpensive food can be produced.

Sustainable agriculture, in contrast to industrial agriculture, works to produce food by ecologically sound and sustainable means (e.g., keeping soil healthy, promoting diversity, care of water systems, minimizing pollution) and foregoes practices that are environmentally damaging and that pose health risks.

 

This page has paths:

Contents of this path: