CHALLENGES

FARMING EVOLUTION

Farmers Grappling With Challenges

Conventional Farming, A threat To Ecosystem

CHALLENGES WITH TRADITIONAL FARMING

Increased use of fertilizers was another result of the Green Revolution. Particulate amounts of most fertilizers enter the hydrologic cycle through run-off. As a result, bodies of water become enriched in dissolved nutrients, such as nitrates and phosphates. The growth of aquatic plants in rivers and lakes is overstimulated, and this results in the depletion of dissolved oxygen. This process of eutrophication can harm all aquatic life in these ecosystems.

With an increasing reliance on irrigation, groundwater resources are mismanaged and overtapped. The rate of groundwater recharge is slow, usually between 0.1 and 0.3 percent per year. When the amount of water pumped out of the ground exceeds the recharge rate, it is referred to as aquifer overdraft. An aquifer is a water-bearing stratum of permeable rock, sand, or gravel.

MONOCULTURE

Modern agriculture emphasizes crop specialization, also known as monoculture. Farmers, especially in industrialized regions, often grow a single crop on much of their land. Problems associated with this practice are exacerbated when a single variety or cultivar of a species is grown. Such a strategy allows the farmer to reduce costs, but it also makes the crop, and thus the farmand community, susceptible to widespread crop failure.

EROSION

An age-old problem, soil loss from erosion occurs all over the world.As soil becomes unproductive or erodes away, more land is plowed. The newly plowed lands usually are considered marginal, meaning they are too steep, nonporous or too sandy, or deficient in some other way.When natural vegetative cover blankets these soils, it protects them from erosive agents: water, wind, ice, or gravity. Plant cover “catches” rainwater that seeps downward into the soil rather than running off into rivers. As marginal land is plowed or cleared to grow crops, erosion increases.

POLLUTION & SILT

Besides causing resistance among harmful bacteria, insects, and weeds, pesticides inevitably wash into, and contaminate, surface and groundwater supplies. Chemicals, although problematic, are not as difficult to contend with as the increasingly heavy silt load choking the life out of streams and rivers.Accelerated erosion from water runoff carries silt particles into streams, where they remain suspended and inhibit the growth of many forms of plant and animal life.

PESTICIDE RESISTANCE

With the onset of the Green Revolution, the use of herbicides, insecticides, and other pesticides increased dramatically all over the world. An increasing awareness of problems caused by overuse of pesticides extends even to household antibacterial cleaning agents and other products. Mutations among the genes of bacteria and plants have allowed these organisms to resist the effects of chemicals that were toxic to their ancestors. Use of pesticides leads to a cycle wherein more, or different combinations of, chemicals are used, and more pests develop resistance to these toxins.

Fertilizers and Eutrophication

Water Depletion

Soil Salinization

In addition, continued irrigation of arid regions can lead to soil problems. Soil salinization is widespread in the small-grained soils of these regions, which have a high water absorption capacity and a low infiltration rate. Some irrigation practices add large amounts of salts into the soil, increasing its natural rate of salinization. This can also occur at the base of a hill slope. Soil salinization has been recognized as a major process of land degradation.

Urban Sprawl

As more farms become mechanized, the need for farmers and farm workers is being drastically reduced. Urban sprawl converts a tremendous amount of cropland into parking lots, malls, industrial parks, and suburban neighborhoods. If cities were located in marginal areas, then concern about the loss of farmland to commercial development would be nominal.

SOLVING GLOBAL FOOD SCARCITY WITH AQUAPONICS

The world population is constantly increasing at a rate that is considered not to be sustainable by most environmentalists. We are simply going to exhaust earth's resources at the expense of future generations. Food shortage continues to be a thorn in the flesh of most governments. Reliance on ineffective conventional farming methods has partly contributed to this scourge. Fortunately, man was gifted with a brain that continues to help in the trumping of most world problems; problems such as food shortage. We have come up with several technologies that go a long way in ensuring food abundance. One such technology is the aquaponics system.

A Farming Solution That Requires No Soil

The statistics showing the percentage of arable land per country can be very disheartening. A huge portion of the land on earth does not have fertile soil. Lack of arable land has made most people throughout the world shy away from farming activities. The good news is that there is a solution that does not require soil at all. Aquaponics systems allow for production of bountiful harvests without soil. Plants such as cabbages, lettuce, roses, tomatoes, tomatoes and onions are all successfully grown in an aquatic environment. With aquaponics systems, more mouths can be fed and lives saved.

All Year Round Farming Regardless Of Climatic Conditions

Aquaponics systems allow all year round farming regardless of the prevailing climatic conditions. Indeed there are areas in the world such as the Arctic regions and African deserts where the climate is harsh to farming. Other places also have their fair share of tough winter seasons. With aquaponics systems, one can therefore not cite tough climatic conditions as an excuse of not engaging in farming activities. The energy supply in aquaponics systems allows them to have environmental control and therefore achieve ambient temperatures and continuity at all times. This in turn allows for all year round food production that helps feed the world population. Instead of spending significant amounts of money on chemical fertilizers and other expensive ways of solving the food problem, governments especially in emerging economies can invest in aquaponics systems.

Minimal Food Loss To Parasites

A significant portion of agricultural produce gets ravished by parasites that essentially mean lower produce. Farmers are forced to spend significant amounts of money on chemical sprays to tackle these parasites. This makes them demand higher prices on their produce in a bid to cut down on their losses. The nature of aquaponics systems make them uninhabitable to parasites thus ensuring abundant food production.

WHY AQUAPONICS

WHAT IS AQUAPONICS

Aquaponics is the union of hydroponics (growing plants without soil) and aquaculture (farming fish or other aquatic organisms) for a fast, efficient method of producing both plant and fish crops. Fish waste from the aquaculture portion of the system, is broken down by bacteria into dissolved nutrients (eg nitrogen and phosphorus compounds) that plants utilize to grow in a hydroponic unit. This nutrient removal not only improves water quality for the fish but also decreases overall water consumption by limiting the amount released as effluent. Aquaponics shares many of the advantages that hydroponics has over conventional crop production methods including:

Reduced land area requirements.
Reduced water consumption.
Accelerated plant growth rates.
Year-round production in controlled environments.

This growing technique reduces crop production time considerably. For example, butterhead lettuce varieties can be produced in about 30 days, as opposed to the typical 60-day growing period needed under conventional methods. In temperate climates, aquaponic operations are typically operated year-round in a greenhouse or other controlled environment, which allow producers to take advantage of higher seasonal produce prices in the winter.

Aquaponics has additional advantages:

Operational efficiency with shared equipment.
Multiple crops produced simultaneously.