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Sustainable Agriculture |
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A.P. Umrani Editor |
Editorial During my PhD research, I realised that most of current theoretical concepts of sustainability are initiated in the developed countries. These theories concern about impacts of agriculture on environment and human health. Particularly, organic or biodynamic farming has their roots in regions characterised by a high level of resource consumption, food surpluses and high level of agrochemical inputs. These regions also have relatively fertile soils, stable human population, rich economies, governments which concentrate on reduction in food surpluses and customers are some extent ready to pay higher prices for organically produced foods. In contrast, many developed countries are characterised by a lower level of resource consumption, frequent or chronic food shortages, lower levels of agrochemical inputs, relatively fragile soils and rapidly growing human populations. The important difference between production systems of many developed and developing countries currently is that the former employ a high level of agrochemical inputs and latter employ low levels; thus most developed countries are facing problems from accumulation and leaching of soil nutrients. On the other hand, in poor quality soils of developing countries, soil nutrients are lost from the nutrient cycle during the harvest of high-energy crops and the sale of animals. These soil nutrients need to be replaced either by biological fixation or imported from out side the system, otherwise land becomes unfertile and barren. Therefore, sustainability has different meaning for developed and developing countries, although end targets and results may be the same. Also sophistication of organic farming may not be achievable in developing countries, because of increasing population pressure and poor economical situations.
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