Importance of Agriculture

Serena Cuoghi
Title of Professor of Biology

It was only through the capacity that human beings developed techniques and technologies to grow their own foods of vegetable origin, to incorporate them into their daily diet. in a permanent way, in addition to achieving with it the domestication and breeding of animals that served as a source of protein and even as a companion, thereby allowing move towards a more stable, safe, placid and social way of life, through the establishment of settlements that in turn will stimulate the construction of their own households. In this sense, the importance of agriculture for humans even represents the starting point for the development of an increasingly complex mind, technological and capable of solving the new problems that it had to face as populations they grew.

However, despite being one of the oldest human practices, agriculture is still far from being considered a fully perfected resource. There is a large number of variables that influence this fact and its consequences, which range from the ecological to the economic, making development more necessary than ever. of scientific investigations that provide contributions towards the production of an agriculture that is increasingly harmonious with the environment and the creation of production models focused on an equal distribution of food, and its economic accessibility by all humans, as the essence of their fundamental rights and measures for the eradication of hunger.

Impact of agriculture

Throughout the centuries – even more so since the first industrial revolution and the beginning of modernity – agriculture has taken increasingly aggressive forms towards the environment, causing severe impacts on biodiversity in each area where it is implemented, particularly through large extensive cultivation of one or very few species, artificially creating colonization by cultivated species, completely breaking the dynamics of variation of species that for millennia had co-evolved in that space, until reaching their own ecological balance.

On the other hand, modern agriculture has also had a negative impact on soils. The high erosion and wear of nutrients in the soils, due to the lack of variations in the dynamics of agriculture, leads to the need to incorporate artificially the nutrients needed by the crops, this implies the use of chemical fertilizers that could well be in accordance with the characteristics of both the soil and the plants and not pose a greater risk, however, some fertilizers can also create unnecessary waste which along with the required pesticides and herbicides in extensive agriculture, intended for the elimination of insects and weeds respectively, represent a critical source of contamination both for soils and for the waters.

And since it is also about water, it is not only affected by a pollution issue, but also by the extreme need as a vital liquid for the development of crops, even reaching the predominance of the importance of agriculture over water administration, creating on many occasions, deviations from the natural channels of rivers, privatization of wells and natural water reservoirs, thus altering other ecosystems and even populations human.

agricultural transformation

All of the above has as a point of convergence the way in which the need for large-scale production of food has become translated into the establishment of an agricultural model of large amounts of hectares, cultivated with a very low variety of species, a fact that It does not occur naturally, but rather in climate zones that allow it, where in general both the variety and the quantity of settlers.

However, humans have been able to create larger and larger populations with almost no variety of species, hence nature considers those species artificially inserted as a real threat, activating defense mechanisms that we decided to call crop pests, through a battle in which there is no way for there to be winners, unless strategies more in line with nature's own rules are adopted, thus assuming a sustainable agricultural development with the environment, balancing these practices with the field of biodiversity and respect for life in the planet.

Bibliographic references

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Morris, d. (1975). The Human Zoo. Plaza & Janes, S.A. Publishers. HE. Barcelona, ​​Spain.

World, b. (2008). Agriculture for development. Global development report.

PEDREÑO, José Navarro, et al. (1995). Organic waste and agriculture. University of Alicante, Spain.

VanderPloeg, J. d. (2014). Ten qualities of family farming. LEISA Journal of Agroecology, 29(4), 6-8.