The way we are feeding the world today is starving the world of tomorrow.
Our current agricultural practices rely heavily on high yield farming involving chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Although this form of high yield farming is capable of producing large quantities of food in the short run, it destroys our land and our food in the process. Furthermore, our current food system in general is putting incredible stress on our environment.
Forcing the earth to produce an unnaturally large amount of food depletes the soil of nutrients. This means that the soil is no longer fertile. It becomes incapable of growing food and is essentially useless. Once all of our soil is depleted, we will quite simply be unable to grow any more food. And the world will starve.
In addition to destroying our land, high yield farming is destroying our food. The nutritional quality of our food is declining at a frightening rate. The produce sold in your grocery store today has only 60% of the nutrition it did only 30 years ago. If this trend continues, our food will soon not be of enough quality to support our basic nutritional needs. This decline in quality is the result of high yield farming not allowing food to grow at a natural rate in a chemical-free environment.
Finally, the pollution caused by large farm equipment and food transportation vehicles is devastating. Most of these trucks and machines operate on diesel fuel, which is one of the most environmentally harmful sources of energy.
Our current agricultural practices are destroying our land, our food, and our environment. But with urban agriculture, we can solve these problems. We can start growing nutritious food in a sustainable way without polluting the earth with toxins.
Stay tuned, and find out how in future blog posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment