Agriculture as a Method for Natural Resource Management
Contents
- Introduction
- Agriculture
- Settled cultivation
- Shifting cultivation
- Changes in cultivation practices
- Challenges Faced by Agriculture
Introduction
In order to exist in the many ecoregions of the world, humans have been utilising the natural resources offered by the biodiversity of their environment, including land and water. Different cultures have developed distinctive methods of managing the natural resources to improve the quality of life through experimentation. These essentially involve controlling how people interact with landscapes. Natural Resource Management is the name given to these procedures and methods. Natural resource management (NRM), as it is officially defined, is the activity of utilising and conserving natural resources in a way that ensures the nutritional and environmental security of both present and future generations.
Agriculture
In the Fertile Crescent, which includes modern-day Egypt, Israel, Turkey, and Iraq, people began to cultivate grains rather than gather them from the wild around 8,500 BCE. They started domesticating animals like sheep, pigs, and goats around 7,000 BCE. They domesticated cattle a millennium later. But even if agriculture has been a "practise" for many years, the word wasn't even created until the 15th century! The cultivation of land for efficient food growth and livestock raising is referred to as "agriculture." By preparing the soil, growing the crops, harvesting them, and preparing them for market, farmers directly participate in agriculture. Along with raising animals, they also cultivate grasslands, gather the grass, and The two main systems utilised in agriculture are monoculture (single-species planting) and polyculture (multiple-species planting). Silviculture is a type of agriculture that uses tamed trees.
Humans were able to employ agriculture to utilise the land for food production and to settle permanently in one location. Compared to the formerly nomadic lives that people had led, it was a significant transformation. The alteration of landscapes is arguably agriculture's most significant effect on the environment. Natural ecosystems are replaced by specialised agroecosystems, which include wild and domesticated species of plants and animals, as agriculture spreads into new regions.
Farming boosted food security but needed more labour to produce the same amount of food as hunter-gatherers. As farming grew, there was more competition for resources, particularly for land and water, which led to an increase in community disputes over ownership of those resources.
The human food resource base was further impacted by agriculture. Today, the majority of the world's agricultural production is made up of cotton, soybeans, wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, sugar, and a small number of other grains and legumes. Cattle, pigs, poultry, and sheep are the main animals raised for food. On the other side, one could also contend that agriculture gave people the food they needed to create the sophisticated societies we see today, to engage in research and the arts, and to raise the standard of living for all people. Agriculture is practised very differently in different parts of the world. The two main categories of these techniques are established cultivation and shifting cultivation. There is a lot of regional variety within each class.
Settled cultivation
Today, settled agriculture is practised throughout the majority of the world. In this kind, the soil is prepared for the cultivation of chosen species and worked for a number of years after an area has been cleared of its native flora. The plough is the distinguishing tool used in settled agriculture. About 6,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia, the first ploughs were invented. This made it possible to use animal labour and lessened the demand for physical labour in agriculture. In established farming, techniques like crop rotation and nutrient addition are used to sustain soil fertility over an extended period of time. Crop growth is boosted by irrigation measures. In addition to using rainfall, it is feasible to acquire water from surface water bodies or groundwater sources by diverting water courses into fields. Permanent agriculture covers a sizable portion of the plains, as in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in India. Water and a plentiful source of nutrients from the flood water assist farms in river floodplains. The productivity of settled agriculture has increased via the application of innovative techniques. They are especially helpful in challenging terrains like mountains where flat places are hard to come by. Here, a couple of these techniques are discussed.
balcony farming Terrace farming techniques can be used in steep places to perform permanent cultivation. This technique enables farmers to create flat spaces on slopes by erecting low walls made of rock and earth up the side of hills. Crops are planted on the terraces, which are flat regions. In Asia, terrace farming is a widespread method that is employed when the terrain is especially mountainous or steep. Terrace farming is used in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and other regions of northeastern India.
The terraces are beneficial in a number of ways, but keeping the soil in place is one of them. Using a system of tiny apertures and gates, the water flowing down the hill by gravity may be changed and channelled through the terraces, allowing different regions to be dry or wet at any given time. Terrace farms typically grow crops including rice, wheat, barley, potatoes, and other vegetables. Using mixed farming techniques will boost the productivity of terrace farms.
Rice and fish farming:
A rice-fish system is a combined rice field or rice field/pond complex where rice and fish are farmed side by side or alternately. Fish may invade fields intentionally, naturally from nearby streams during flooding, or by a mix of the two.
Maintaining open field entrances and low bunds helps to direct wild fish into rice fields. By putting branches in the fields to serve as a refuge for the fish, they can also be drawn there. The field might be made deeper in some spots to promote fish growth. Wild fish can be taken out of rice fields by emptying the field, netting, hooking, trapping, harpooning, or any number of other methods. The fish may be sent into nearby trap pond areas as water levels drop so they can be kept alive until needed. The fish have two functions. They eliminate the weeds in the field, and their waste enriches the soil with manure. In order to lessen damage to fish and pollutants that impact humans, this strategy also aids in reducing the usage of pesticides for rice farming. As a result, this approach promotes organic farming practises. In China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the nations of South America, rice and fish have been raised since antiquity. Today, several European nations, including Russia, have adopted it.
Agroforestry
Trees or shrubs are cultivated around or among crops or pastureland in an agroforestry or agro-sylviculture form of land use management. In order to generate bio-diverse, productive, and sustainable landuse systems, it blends shrubs and trees with agricultural and forestry technologies. To make the best use of the available space, a variety of annual and perennial crops—including herbs, shrubs, and trees—are cultivated together. Agricultural systems can profit from the trees' wide range of benefits, including fruit, medicine, feed, lumber, and fuelwood. Agroforestry examples include the home gardens that are maintained in rural homes, particularly in north-east India. Home gardens are often modest areas of land that are located near or around the house. These plots are farmed by household members as a support for the farms. They contain a variety of annual and perennial species and serve as test gardens for cultivating unusual plant species before introducing them to the area. It is common for plantations to also raise cattle, with the manure serving as fertiliser for the plant crops. In the state of Nagaland in northeastern India, one can witness extremely varied, multilayered, and complicated home gardens. Agroforestry also includes the traditional cultivation of big cardamom in Sikkim, coffee plantations in the Karnataka province of Kodagu, and rubber plantations in Sumatra. Both places have kept their enormous, shaded forest trees, but they have also planted coffee or cardamom in the underbrush. Both crops are highly profitable and tolerant of the shade. Forest birds and canopy mammals can roam freely because forest trees are kept in good condition. This farming is sustainable since the biodiversity and ecology of the soil are preserved.
Shifting cultivation
In hilly and forested environments, shifting cultivation is a common method of cultivation. In this procedure, a piece of land is cleared and farmed for two to three years. As many forested environments, especially rainforests, have poor soil as a result of the frequent rain washing away topsoil and nutrients and inhibiting the formation of rich soil, it is done in places of poor soil quality, usually in forests and woodlands.
For a while, the land is kept fallow, allowing vegetation growth to restore the soil's nutrients. Otherwise, agricultural yields must be maintained by investing a significant amount of time, work, and fertiliser. Simply put, it is simpler and more cost-effective to relocate to a different piece of property and then come back once the soil productivity has been restored. Due to the practise of cutting down vegetation before burning it, it is frequently referred to as "Slash-and-burn." Making a field requires a lot of labour because the technology used in clearing is typically confined to hand cutting. On a piece of land, trees are felled and stored for future use as fuel and lumber. The remaining foliage is removed, dried out, and then burned.
Burning occurs when the weather is dry enough to permit burning but not so dry that a healthy forest can be affected by the fire. Alternatives include creating firebreaks. The ash then fertilises the field in addition to cleaning it. Digging sticks are then used to plant the crops. Polyculture is frequently used because it produces better and more consistent outcomes than monoculture. Communities in various ecoregions of India have developed native types of vegetables, millet, and rice specifically for this form of farming.
The Swidden System is a permaculture or integrated system of sustainable agriculture that makes extensive use of the slash-and-burn method (Conklin, 1957; Spencer, 1966). A technique that produces a one-time field is slash-and-burn. Instead, in a swidden system, cleared fields can be cultivated for a short period of time before being left fallow for a sufficient amount of time to recuperate, during which other plots are cultivated, and finally, the fields can be repurposed for cultivation.
As a result, various plots are farmed at regular intervals. A swidden system needs a lot of land, the majority of which is always fallow. Field rotation must be carefully maintained for a swidden system to be effective. When an old field's agricultural yield declines, the farmer closes it and starts a new one.
This form of rotational farming is referred to as "jhum cultivation" in north-east India, and those who engage in it are known as "jhumias." It is carried out on steep hillside slopes when terracing is impracticable and settled farming is not possible due to the poor soil condition. Jhum cultivation requires sophisticated and challenging management, including choosing when to fire, where to place the next field, when to plant, and what to plant. Jhum has been successfully used by populations in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur for many decades. They are highly competent individuals who are well-versed in the region's topography, biodiversity, soils, climate, and farming practises. Management involves understanding forest succession and recognising when a previous field can be repurposed. Each distinct system must be managed according to its own set of water, soil, and species conditions. Most of the fields in the system are now diverse stages of recovery, with each field having a slightly unique biotic community. Therefore, having a large number of fallowed fields in various phases of succession both dramatically improves biotic diversity within the field system and boosts resource use opportunities. Numerous groups in Central and Southern India also employed comparable techniques. In regions of present-day Madhya Pradesh, the Baiga tribe used the "dahiya" method. The Baigas historically only used shifting agriculture techniques, which do not require a plough, because they believed that using a plough would be like clawing their mother's flesh. Slash-and-burn practises always lead to the eradication of the forest inside the field's limits. However, if the field is modest in comparison to the remaining forest in the area, the forest is not seriously harmed because the field is swiftly taken over by vegetation. It might even get better if you keep replacing little patches. Slash-and-burn techniques can damage or even kill a forest permanently if too much of it is subjected to them at once. This is the case in many rainforests. The impact of shifting cultivation on the natural vegetation has been negligible for thousands of years. However, as more people practise it, there are now issues with land availability. In many places, the length of the agricultural cycle has decreased, with individuals returning to the same field in as little as four to six years. This reduction in fallow periods prevents soil healing, encourages overuse and land degradation, which lowers crop productivity. Innovative approaches are being tested to enhance fallow management, which can hasten soil recovery. Farmers can increase the productivity of fallow fields by planting a variety of trees and other crops there. In jhum and fallow regions, crops with higher market values, such as pineapple, vegetables, etc., are also being tried.
Changes in cultivation practices.
Since the start of the "Green Revolution," farming methods have undergone significant transformation. The new agricultural techniques pushed in the latter half of the 20th century are referred to as the "green revolution." In the 1940s, American scientist Norman Borlaug created new, high-yield wheat types that were immune to disease. Mexico was able to produce more wheat than was required by its own population by combining Borlaug's wheat varieties with modern, mechanised agricultural technology, which resulted in Mexico being a wheat exporter by the 1960s. The 1950s and 1960s saw the global adoption of the Green Revolution's innovations as a result of its success in Mexico. In order to ensure that the populace had enough food, India utilised green revolution technologies in the early 1960s. High-yield varieties, or domesticated plants cultivated specifically to respond to fertilisers and produce a higher amount of grain per acre sown, were the type of crops developed during the Green Revolution. The farming methods used for the new crop kinds were very different from those used in the past. Under the Green Revolution, extensive use of chemical fertilisers, herbicides, and weedicides became essential components of agriculture. Crop growth requires extensive irrigation. In order to meet the ensuing increased need for enormous amounts of water, vast reservoirs, irrigation canal systems, and excessive groundwater use in areas with a lack of water were built.
Processing crops with high yields required mechanisation. In most places, manual labour was replaced by tractors, harvesters, and other machinery. But as time goes on, the Green Revolution is being criticised more and more for its wasteful and harmful methods that harm the land and water supplies. It is held accountable for social, economic, and political changes in the community and has significantly impacted traditional natural resource management methods in several regions of India.
Challenges Faced by Agriculture
For even the most basic food requirements, an expanding population calls for greater food production. Although new farming techniques, such those used in the "green revolution," increased food production, they had a severe impact on the soil. In many areas of India, these practises led to soil degradation and overuse of the land. Due to competition from other intensive uses like mining, industrialization, and urbanisation, land has become a very expensive commodity. Despite providing a living for a sizable percentage of India's population, farming has recently lost its economic viability. To transform farming into a sustainable and profitable natural resource management practise, it is vital to use the right management techniques.
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