“Sustainable” has become one of the buzzwords of the 21st century. Increasing numbers of universities offer courses or even programs in “sustainability,” and many large companies boast substantial departments devoted to the subject.
However, as with many vague, feel-good concepts, “sustainability” contains more than a little sophistry. For example, sustainability in agriculture is often linked to organic farming, whose advocates tout it as a “sustainable” way to feed the planet’s rapidly expanding population. But what does “sustainable” really mean, and how does it relate to organic methods of food production?
The organic movement’s claims about the sustainability of its methods are dubious. For example, a recent study found that the potential for groundwater contamination can be dramatically reduced if fertilizers are distributed through the irrigation system according to plant demand during the growing season; organic farming, however, depends on compost, the release of which is not matched to plant demand.
Though composting receives good press as a “green” practice, it generates a significant amount of greenhouse gases (and is often a source of pathogenic bacteria in crops).
The study also found that “intensive organic agriculture relying on solid organic matter, such as composted manure that is mixed in to the soil prior to planting, resulted in significant down-leaching of nitrate” into groundwater. Increasing the nitrate levels in groundwater is hardly a hallmark of sustainability, especially with many of the world’s most fertile farming regions in the throes of drought.
Moreover, the current injection or feeding livestock antibiotics, eventually will come out of their manures which be used to make compost to contaminate our sustainable land and endanger our health.
Your Cheap & Quality Hydroponics System from http://www.chicfarm.
