With our world population rapidly growing, the question of how food will be produced in our future often comes up. Sustainability, and how we will be able to sustain our growing populations is not something new that we have been looking at. From the neolithic revolution to our current environmental revolution, humans have established different forms of technological advances to be able to support a higher demand for food with growing populations. At an increasing and faster rate of food production, carbon emissions have been higher than ever before, yet we can still look back at the past to help us prepare for our future. The future of agriculture is now, in preparing for sustaining our production for the world's food, fuel, and fiber we can turn towards forms of regenerative agriculture combining older practices with newer technologies.
In the United States, we currently can produce high yields of food from our monocultural practices. This practice can only be sustained for so long. Growing the same crop in the same area degrades the land. As the years pass we will be needing to use more sources of water, fertilizers, and pesticides to maintain the same yield. Shifting our monocultural practices towards forms of regenerative agriculture such as polyculture and crop rotation is important for us to be able to fully utilize land that is currently being used for feedstock crops, biofuels, and cash crops. Polyculture allows more than one crop variation to be grown on the same plot of land, crop rotation allows for different crops to be grown in the same land every year in a planned recurring sequence. These growing techniques imitate an ecosystem's diversity, which helps the soil health and reduces soil erosion, and reduces using large amounts of fertilizer use and pesticides by naturally breaking down the cycles of weeds, insects, and diseases. Ultimately, using the land available for healthily growing crops can help maintain our food systems sustainable balance for the growing populations.
If we can maintain a successful and sustainable way of growing our crops, we can still have a large variety of crops and food to rely on in the future. Crop rotation, for example, would include planting corn during one season, then planting soybeans during a different season in the same area where the corn would optimize nutrients in the soil and replenish the soil of nitrogen to reduce the number of fertilizers used on the corn. Polyculture would include planting different varieties of crops at the same time for them to benefit from each other and creating their ecosystems. For example, pineapples or bananas can be intercropped with date or coconut palms to simultaneously grow a variety of different crops. These practices are sustainable due to their less usage of land and water, while still producing the same yields, along with improving soil properties and utilization.
These agricultural practices have been used by early human populations to support their populations, and with the rising innovations in technology, our current populations can further improve these practices while integrating new technologies to maintain them sustainably. Biofuels can be used to power our machinery, extracted from crops and even algae. Biodiesel can be extracted from crops such as soybeans, corn, and peanuts to be used as a clean-burning fuel. Algae biomass productivity can be increased in areas and turned into algal biofuels sustainably power the machinery used to maintain farmlands and growing areas. Biodiesel can substitute diesel usage and is better for the environment since waste is minimized, emissions would be reduced and machinery would be powered by clean renewable resources. Developing solar-powered technologies such as tractors can play a role in sustainably powering machines. Solar-powered or electric machinery is something that is and will continue to develop since they help reduce carbon emissions. Growing technology and the technological advances we have currently made will help us maintain our food production.
As an active member of my Future Farmers of America chapter, I have been able to expand my knowledge and appreciation of agriculture during high school. Agriculture is connected to my culture as well in helping me maintain connections with my family and heritage. Sustainability is something that I find important for others to learn and understand, especially when it comes to agriculture. Moving forward, whether it's contributing to conversations inside or outside of the classroom, with strangers I meet, simply sharing information through social media, or just maintaining my own garden, promoting the importance of agriculture will be something that I will continue to do. There is never enough to know about, as our world keeps changing and advancing, we will continue to improve our advancements and look from the past to the future to help us maintain our growing population.