How Sustainable Agriculture can become a Reality in the United States
Mary Dyer
G124 English Composition
March 15, 2011
Jennifer Rupp
How Sustainable Agriculture can become a Reality in the United States
The first question that may be asked is what is sustainable agriculture? Sustain, from the Latin word sustinere, literally means to keep or maintain. Sustainable is used in terms regarding agriculture to refer to farming systems that are able to maintain productivity while conserving our natural resources. Sustainable farms need to also be able to be commercially competitive as well as environmentally sound (United States Department of Agriculture, 2008). The principle goal of sustainability is to be able to meet the need for high quality nutritional food to feed the world at the present time, and at the same time not compromise the future generations ability to meet their own needs (United States Department of Agriculture, 2008). For this to occur, the industrial farms in the United States must take steps to incorporate sustainable farming practices to protect the environment.
One of the first steps that the agriculture industry in the United Stated should take to create a sustainable system of farming is to incorporate practices that maintain the health of the soil. Firstly, protecting the quality of the soil can be achieved by rotating the crops, which helps replace the nutrients in the soil that may have been lost while growing the cash crop. Secondly, the soil can also be protected by planting cover crops. For example, a winter cover crop is planted in late summer or fall to provide soil cover during the winter. Often a legume is chosen because it will not only cover and protect the soil over the long harsh winter but legumes also have the extra benefit in the fact that they also add nitrogen back into to the soil when tilled under as a form of green manure. Cover crops may also be grown in-between the rows of the more profitable cash crop,...