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Today's industrial agriculture produces a bountiful harvest—enough food for our country and for export abroad as well. But agriculture's dependence on chemical pesticides and fertilizers is also producing damaged soil, depleted groundwater, and polluted rivers.
UCS promotes another vision of agriculture—one that views agriculture as a system working in harmony with the environment while continuing to be highly productive. This kind of agriculture would be sustainable far into the future.
Sustainable agriculture is holistic: it treats the farm as an integrated whole composed of soil, plants, animals, and insects whose interaction can be adjusted and enriched to solve problems and maximize yields.
Sustainable agriculture is also scientific: it relies on knowledge about the elements of the system and their interaction to achieve its results. It is a powerful approach that can produce high yields and profits for farmers.
UCS is working to transform government policies so that they support sustainable agriculture as they have long supported industrial agriculture.
These policies will need to include subsidy programs to help farmers through a transition to sustainable agriculture and the occasional crop failure, research to understand the interactions among all elements of farming and to produce appropriate new technologies, and extension services to update farmers about new developments in science and technology.
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© Union of Concerned Scientists
Page Last Revised: 09/07/05 |
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