For their existence, all living organisms essentially require the food. Food is required to perform various life activities. It is required for growth, development and body repair.
Sources of food:
The two major sources of food are the plants and the animals.
Animal Products: Milk and milk products, meat, egg and poultry, fish and other sea products.
With the increase in human population there is a growing demand for food resources. It is necessary to increase production of both, plant and animals. Earlier also to meet the demand of Indian population our scientists put efforts to increase food production. This resulted in a variety of ‘revolutions’ which made India self-reliant.
These revolutions include green revolution (bumper production of food grains), blue revolution (enhanced fish production), white revolution (increased milk production) and yellow revolution (increased oil production). But it is important that we should increase in food production without degrading our environment and disturbing the natural balance (soil erosion, silting of rivers, floods, droughts, ozone depletion etc).
Hence, the need is develop an agricultural system that aims to meet the needs of present generation without endangering the resources of future generation and without causing degradation in the present environment.
Currently, there is a need of adoption of technique sustainable agriculture and organic farming.
What is Sustainable agriculture
Sustainability means keeping an effort going continuously. So, sustainable agriculture means successful management of resources for agriculture to satisfy the changing human needs, while maintaining or enhancing the quality of environment and conserving natural resources.
Sustainable agriculture can be achieved by adopting;
Mixed farming
Mixed cropping
Crop rotation
Crop selection
Varietal improvement
Advantages of Sustainable agriculture:
It achieves the integration of natural biological cycles and control.
It protects and renews soil fertility and the natural resource base.
It provides an adequate and dependable form of income.
It promotes opportunity in family farming and farm communities.
Organic Farming
It is practice of raising unpolluted crops through the use of manures, bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides with healthy cropping systems that provide optimum nutrients to plants and keep the pests as well as weeds under control.
In organic farming:
There is little or no use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.therefore, there is no toxicity due to pollution of crop plants, soil, water or air.
Biofertilizers include the nitrogen fixing organism and mineral solubilizing bacteria.
Biopesticides are organism or their extracts which repel or kill weeds, insects and other pests.
Healthy cropping include mixed cropping, intercropping and crop rotation.
Advantages of Organic farming:
It does not cause pollution of any component of our environment.
Farm wastes are recycled.
Soil fertility is preserved.
Organic farming methods are studied in the field of agro ecology.
Further Topics on the Chapter Improvement in food resources can be seen on the below links
