Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change

Need a custom
essay ASAP?
We’ll write your essay from scratch and per instructions: even better than this sample, 100% unique, and yours only.
Get essay on this topic
Text
Sources

Abstract

Agricultural sector of an economy is the most crucial one in terms of providing food to the individuals of the nations as well as contributing to the exports and foreign exchange reserve of the country. The economy of the developing nations primarily depends on the agricultural sector as the occupation of most of the citizens pertain to this sector. This research paper depicts that the increasing population creates pressure on the agricultural sector of the economy as the existing land available for production of crop fails to feed the billions of the world. The sustainability of this sector for sustenance of life is threatened not only due to the increasing population but also for the climatic change that the world is witnessing. The paper reviews the existing research work undertaken by various scholars to determine the impact of climatic change on the sustainability of the agricultural sector. The sustainability issue of this sector is also analysed using the survey of literature and providing reasons other than the change in climate to explain as well as mitigate the problem. The paper concludes by providing implications of alteration of climate on the future of the agricultural sector and also identifies the requirement to undertake future research to provide solutions to mitigate this issue.

Survey of Literature

Wall and Smit (2005) suggest in their research paper that the agricultural sector continuously adapts itself to the transforming scenario to ensure sustainability as well as to feed millions of individuals across the world. The primary altering scenario pertains to the climatic change that the world is witnessing due to the increased pollutant in the atmosphere. The paper undertakes case studies of Canadian agricultural firms to analyse the adaption undertaken by the agricultural sector. The authors concluded that the government of the nation plays an effective role in the effective transformation of the sector to ensure its sustainability.

Howden, Soussana, Francesco, Tubiello, Chhetri, Dunlop and Meinke (2007) suggest the adaptive measures that the government as well as the farmers can undertake to ensure that the agriculture production is retained in the future. They also imply that moderate change in the climatic conditions is beneficial for the agricultural production. The researches recommended methods to mitigate the risks from drastic climatic transformations, which involves the policymakers of the nation to strategize relevant policies for the agricultural sector to ensure its sustainability.

The research paper of Tilman, Balzer, Hill and Befort (2011) depicts that the demand for food from all over the world is rapidly increasing owing to the pressure from the growing population. The authors describe that the agricultural land cannot be expanded any further as it affects the environment adversely. At the same time, the demand for food has also amplified on the recent years, which resulted in the global food crisis. The authors conclude that the crisis can be mitigated by undertaking extensive research and development pertaining to innovation of high yielding crops.

Pollution, global warming and the climate change are going to affect the sustainability and growth of the agriculture segment to a large extent and most of the nations, where economy is largely dependent on agriculture are focusing to address this issue (Cahill et al., 2014; Blaum, Griffin, Wiley & Britt, 2017; Wheeler & Von Braun, 2017). According to Costinot, Donaldson and Smith (2016), the average temperature of the earth surface is increasing on a regular basis and the main reason behind this change is the increasing volume of carbon dioxide. While discussing the impact of the same, Stern (2007) in his analysis has pointed out that this excess volume of carbon dioxide is not only a threat to the living being across globe, but at the same time it is an issue which will affect the agriculture as well.

According to analysis of Cook et al. (2013); Mach and Mastrandrea (2014), sustainable agriculture is one of the most important factors of modern era which is associated with use of technology that includes various biodynamic approach and organic materials. Nelson et al. (2014) in their review has mentioned that the idea of sustainable agriculture is helpful for people of the modern era to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which had a negative impact on the overall process. According to Campbell, Thornton, Zougmoré, Van Asten, and Lippe (2014), to measure the adverse impact of the climate change, it is necessary to understand how the process of sustainable agriculture can improve the overall agricultural scenario across the globe and at the same time improve the quality of crop yields well.

The improvement in the sustainable agriculture is largely dependent on how research and development work is going on in different countries (Nelson et al., 2014). Rogers and Marres (2016) in their research have pointed out that continuous research work on the climate change and its impact on the overall society is the key to make people understand the significance of climate change, carbon emission and adverse impact of the greenhouse gas. This in turn, is helpful for the developing nation to improve the sustainable agriculture concept

In the era of globalization and industrialization, close to 40% of world population are still associated with agriculture and mostly the poor countries get affected by the climate change largely (Mach, 2017). According to Kaltenborn (2017); Grover, Brody and Vedlitz (2017), countries where agriculture is the main source of income, must ensure that it is adapting to the climate change by implementing strategies such as introducing the ideology of mono-cropping, popularizing the ideology of conventional soil and work on conventional crop. It would make sure that overall idea of sustainable agriculture is developing at a fast pace.

Trees often play a significant role in nitrogen fixing which helps in erosion of soil, which is one of the key reason behind climate change. It is also important for the administration across the globe to make sure that the volume of food wastage is reduced to minimum possible level (Urry, 2015). In support of this view, Seinfeld (2016) in his review has mentioned that a well-planned sustainable agriculture will help in reducing the cost in relation to food acquisition. As a result, it would help in saving resources for the future.

Conclusion and Implications

Conclusion

The increasing temperature of the earth captured by the high proportion of presence of carbon dioxide has altered the climatic pattern of the earth. The global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, and the decreasing forests of the world threaten the sustainability of the nature in the immediate future. The climatic change of the earth has adversely effected the lives of the human beings including the availability of food. The rise in population of the world reduces the per capita availability of agricultural land. Furthermore, the degradation of the environment has endangered the bio-diversity of the plant, which can be preserved by restoring the forests. This constraints the land from being used for the purpose of agriculture, contributing to the global food crisis. Besides, the sustainability of the agricultural sector is also endangered due to the transformation of the climate of the world. The sustainability of this sector could be ensured by utilizing the biodynamic materials. However, the human beings must identify the requirement of investing in research and development to innovate technologies that would ensure sustainability of the agricultural sector of the economy.

Implications

It has been identified by the scholars that the change in the climate of the planet has worse effects on the developing countries as compared to the developed nations. This is explained by the huge number of population of the developing nation who are engaged with the agricultural sector. The deterioration of the environment resulted in various adverse impacts including soil erosion that directly effects the productivity of the farming sector. Moreover, it has been recognized by the researchers that the inequality among the individuals of the nations as well as between various countries of the world is high. This leads to wastage of food by some people whereas the rest of the world is severely affected by the global food crisis and hunger (Neufeldt, Jahn, Campbell, Beddington, DeClerck, De Pinto & LeZaks, 2013). Therefore, individuals must use their rationality and discretion to combat the problem of sustainability of the agricultural sector.

The government has imposed taxes on the emission of carbon particles by the factories as part of the policy to ensure environmental sustainability (Metcalf & Weisbach, 2009). This reduces the negative externality of the industrial operations as well as secures the non-renewable resources of the nature for the future generation. Furthermore, the Cap-and-Trade System enables the companies to purchase and sell the permits of carbon emission so that they sensibly use the permits as well as enhance their economic benefits from the trade (Du, Ma, Fu, Zhu & Zhang, 2015). These systems focus on ensuring the sustainability of the agricultural sector as well as provide a scope for the policymakers and the research and development teams to introduce innovative as well as inexpensive techniques to mitigate the global crisis (Nelson, 2014).

Did you like this sample?
  1. Blaum, D., Griffin, T. D., Wiley, J., & Britt, M. A. (2017). Thinking about global warming: effect of policy-related documents and prompts on learning about causes of climate change. Discourse Processes, 54(4), 303-316.
  2. Cahill, A. E., Aiello‐Lammens, M. E., Caitlin Fisher‐Reid, M., Hua, X., Karanewsky, C. J., Ryu, H. Y., & Wiens, J. J. (2014). Causes of warm‐edge range limits: asystematic review, proximate factors and implications for climate change. Journal of Biogeography, 41(3), 429-442.
  3. Campbell, B. M., Thornton, P., Zougmoré, R., Van Asten, P., & Lipper, L. (2014). Sustainable intensification: What is its role in climate smart agriculture? Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 8, 39-43.
  4. Cook, J. ,Nuccitelli, D., Green S., Richardson M., Winkler B., Painting R., Way R., Jacobs Du, S., Ma, F., Fu, Z., Zhu, L., & Zhang, J. (2015). Game-theoretic analysis for an emission-dependent supply chain in a ‘cap-and-trade’ system. Annals of Operations Research, 228(1), 135-149.
  5. Costinot, A., Donaldson, D., & Smith, C. (2016). Evolving comparative advantage and the impact of climate change in agricultural markets: Evidence from 1.7 million fields around the world. Journal of Political Economy, 124(1), 205-248.
  6. Grover, H., Brody, S. D., & Vedlitz, A. (2017). Understanding climate change risk perception in the USA. International Journal of Global Warming, 13(2), 113-137.
  7. Howden, S. M., Soussana, J. F., Tubiello, F. N., Chhetri, N., Dunlop, M., & Meinke, H. (2007). Adapting agriculture to climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences104(50), 19691-19696.
  8. Kaltenborn, B. P., Krange, O., & Tangeland, T. (2017). Cultural resources and public trust shape attitudes toward climate change and preferred futures—A case study among the Norwegian public. Futures, 89(1), 1-13.
  9. Mach, K., & Mastrandrea, M. (2014). Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (Vol. 1). C. B. Field, & V. R. Barros (Eds.). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
  10. Metcalf, G. E., & Weisbach, D. (2009). The design of a carbon tax. Harvard Environmental Law Review, 33(1), 499
  11. Nelson, G. C., Valin, H., Sands, R. D., Havlík, P., Ahammad, H., Deryng, D. & Kyle, P. (2014). Climate change effects on agriculture: Economic responses to biophysical shocks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(9), 3274-3279.
  12. Neufeldt, H., Jahn, M., Campbell, B. M., Beddington, J. R., DeClerck, F., De Pinto, A. & LeZaks, D. (2013). Beyond climate-smart agriculture: toward safe operating spaces for global food systems. Agriculture & Food Security, 2(1), 12.
  13. Rogers, R., & Marres, N. (2016). Landscaping climate change: A mapping technique for understanding science and technology debates on the World Wide Web. Public Understanding of Science, 1(1), 1-10
  14. Seinfeld, J. H., & Pandis, S. N. (2016). Atmospheric chemistry and physics: from air pollution to climate change. John Wiley & Sons.
  15. Stern, N. H. (2007). The economics of climate change: The Stern Review / Nicholas Stern. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  16. Tilman, D., Balzer, C., Hill, J., & Befort, B. L. (2011). Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences108(50), 20260-20264.
  17. Urry, J. (2015). Climate change and society. In why the social sciences matter (pp. 45-59). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
  18. Wall, E., & Smit, B. (2005). Climate change adaptation in light of sustainable agriculture. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture27(1), 113-123.
  19. Wheeler, T., & Von Braun, J. (2013). Climate change impacts on global food security. Science, 341(6145), 508-513.
Find more samples:
Related topics
Related Samples
Pages/words: 13 pages/3563 words
Read sample
Pages/words: 5 pages/1449 words
Read sample
Subject: ⚗️ Science
Pages/words: 4 pages/1246 words
Read sample
Subject: 💻 Technology
Pages/words: 4 pages/854 words
Read sample
Subject: ⚗️ Science
Pages/words: 3 pages/770 words
Read sample
Pages/words: 7 pages/1885 words
Read sample
Subject: ⚗️ Science
Pages/words: 4 pages/999 words
Read sample