Five Challenges the Agricultural Sector Faces and What We Can Do About It. Earth.Org Denisa Ogoyi Jun 19th 2024 Agriculture represents a crucial sector that underpins our population growth and well-being. It has been providing nourishment for generations. According to the United Nations, agricultural development is one of the most powerful tools to combat extreme poverty, boost prosperity, and feed the global population. However, our current methods of food production, including monocropping and intensive tilling, have degraded over one-third of the world’s productive topsoil while failing to provide the agricultural yields necessary to sustain the growing global population. We take a look at the major challenges the agricultural sector faces and what alternatives to traditional agriculture should be prioritised.
What Are the Biggest Challenges the Agricultural Sector Faces.......
1. Climate Change......Changing weather patterns, weather extremes, and climate change-triggered droughts are among the key drivers of food insecurity. All these events have a huge impact on food production, as they significantly limit the quality, availability, and accessibility of resources, and compromise the stability of food systems around the world. Agriculture is highly dependent on climate and weather conditions. Prolonged drought or extensive rainfall can have devastating repercussions on soil health and fertility. Average global crop yields for maize or corn are projected to drop by 24% in the next 60 years. Maize is a crucial food staple in most countries and it is grown all over the world, but the largest quantities are produced in nations near the equator, including North and Central America, West Africa, Central Asia, Brazil, and China. While agriculture is heavily compromised by the climate crisis, the sector is also one of the main contributors to global warming. In fact, agriculture contributes almost one-third to global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the reason for which scaling up alternative, more sustainable practices must become a priority
2. Insufficient Agricultural Land......Of the 1.38 billion hectares of arable land available worldwide, more than one-third has been irreversibly compromised since 1961 owing to extensive land conversion and traditional agricultural methods such as monocropping and intensive tilling and land conversion that lead to soil erosion, desertification, and salinisation. In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported a decline of 54 million hectares of arable land across developed countries in North America, Europe, and South Asia. Meanwhile, some countries in East and North Africa as well as South Asia have already reached their limit of farmable land. Only 12% of the global land surface is used for crop production and it is unlikely this number will increase mostly due to urbanisation. That’s why the pressure remains to preserve the existing arable land, despite most of it already starting to degrade..
3. Growing Population.....In 2022, the world population hit 8 billion and if growth continues at the same rate, it will double in next 50 years if the growth continues at the same rate. The reasons behind such unprecedented growth are obvious: high fertility levels and drastic increases in human lifespans – thanks for the most part to remarkable advancements in public health and medicine as well as nutrition and personal hygiene – have accelerated population growth significantly over the last century. An obvious consequence of population growth is a higher demand for food, but if agriculture cannot keep up, then more people will become hungry. And current figures are already alarming.....read on https://earth.org/challenges-farmers/