Agricultural practices remain unsustainable within the outlook of the environment. It's a difficult problem within itself. Providing food to a large population that already suffers from food insecurity is a difficult issue that doesn't just include the practices that we use to bring food to the table for everyone. It's a multifaceted problem that has been running on an exploitative and environmentally disastrous engine for the past couple of years.
My vision for the future is a holistic reassessment and alteration of how governments subsidize and incentivize agricultural practices to promote practices such as diverse perennial poly-cultures and more methodology that remains sustainable.
We throw a lot of money toward livestock and plant agriculture practices and farms that decimate the environment while requiring a tremendous amount of resources to maintain. Monocultures remain the most popular way to grow these crops because of the volume and economical incentive. An unsustainable amount of water, energy, and other resources need to be consumed to keep these practices alive, and in the wake of the ongoing climate catastrophe, it's going to get worse.
But what if we change those incentives? What if we flip the switch and fundamentally change the rules that we play by?
At this point, it is not a matter of if, but a matter of how we should do it.
Money needs to be diverted into polycultures, practices that use intricate adaptable complex systems to our advantage by creating farms that take advantage of diversity. Time needs to be given to cultivating and understanding these practices so that we can use them to their full potential. We need to understand that farming can allow these additions and that while they are tough and very costly to achieve, they will be worth it.
We need to tell our governments that the planet needs this. That we need this. We need to shift the conversation to these practices. We need to generate a movement that shines a light on our agricultural practices. But we can't do this alone.