Does sustainable agriculture employ a more modern approach to farming?
Sustainable agriculture does not mean a return to either the low yields or poor farmers that characterized the 19th century. Rather, sustainability builds on current agricultural achievements, adopting a sophisticated approach that can maintain high yields and farm profits without undermining the resources on which agriculture depends. Crop rotations work to reduce pest-control costs just as well with today’s high yielding varieties of crops as with yesterday’s lower yielding varieties. Making agriculture sustainable does not mean standing by watching pests devour crops. It means approaching pest control in a completely different way using high quality soil, crop rotation, and beneficial insects. We undervalue our scientists and agriculturalists if we accept today’s productive but highly polluting agriculture as the best that this country can do. We need to set agriculture the challenge of developing a highly productive but environmentally sound agriculture and then give farmers and sc
