Community Sustainability in Farming

Community sustainability is a wide term but, as a community director myself, I can say that what it really means is to ensure the sustainability of all parties in the community. When we refer to farming in this way, we are ultimately looking into all aspects, resources, community elements and the land or environment where it occurs. This time we will try to focus on the all the components involved in community sustainability in farming.

There are 3 main aspects to community sustainability in farming: Social, Ecological and Economical.

Let’s look at the social aspect of farming and the ways we must make it sustainable. According to the United Nations, the world population today is 7.7B. We’ve seen an increase of 40% from 1987 to 2011.

While the population grows, the challenge of feeding them all is growing with it due to many variables; a decrease in the number of farmers, the change in nutritional value available, climate change, health demands, new diseases and many more. All these components affect the farming industry.

When we look at the ecological aspect, it becomes all about preserving the resources the world has to offer. With climates changing, there is a need to adapt farming techniques to smarter methods to combat the negative effects and embracing innovative technology is the first logical choice. These methods will allow us to ensure we are not damaging the planet in the process of sustaining ourselves.

On the economical side, we must find a way for farming to become more profitable, otherwise it will not be sustainable. It is no longer a valid excuse to blame the fast pace of living and the growing population, to avoid taking the steps to find sustainable and economical ways of farming. The bottom line is that we need to learn how to make more, with less!

When we look at the history of farming, we see the dramatic change since the ancient digging stick to today’s precision agriculture innovations. The next step is all about sustainable agriculture – from hydroponic systems that grow vegetables and greens in water instead of soil, to monitoring cows to predict their behavior and health. We are changing the game and making sure that the world will not go hungry!