Society issues, painkiller solutions, dependence and sustainable agriculture
2010
Lichtfouse, Eric | Agronomy for Sustainable Development (ASD) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) | Eric Lichtfouse
Mahatma Gandhi listed seven blunders of humanity: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Commerce without morality, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles, Knowledge without character, and Science without humanity. Here I tackle three major issues, climate change, financial crisis and nation security, to disclose weak points of current remedies, and to propose sustainable solutions. Global warming and the unexpected financial crisis will undoubtedly impact all nations. Treating those two critical issues solely by painkiller solutions will fail because only adverse consequences are healed, not their causes. Therefore all sources of issues must be treated at the same time by enhancing collaboration between politicians and scientists. Furthermore, the adverse consequences of globalisation of markets for energy, food and other goods have been overlooked, thus deeply weakening the security of society structures in the event of major breakdowns. Therefore dependence among people, organisations and nations must be redesigned and adapted to take into account ecological, social and security impacts. Solving climate, financial and security issues can be done by using tools and principles developed by agronomists because agronomy integrates mechanisms occurring at various space and time levels. Agriculture is also a central driver for solving most society issues because society has been founded by agriculture, and agriculture is the activity that provides food, renewable energies and materials to humans. I present a to-do list summarising the major practices, principles and benefits of sustainable agriculture based on about 100 recently-published review articles. The practices are agroforestry, allelopathy, aquaculture, beneficial microorganisms and insects, biofertilisation, biofuels, biological control, biological nitrogen fixation, breeding, carbon sequestration, conservation agriculture, crop rotation, cover crops, decision support systems, grass strips, integrated pest management, intercropping, irrigation, mechanical weed control, mulching, no tillage, organic amendments, organic farming, phytoremediation, precision agriculture, seed invigoration, sociology, soil restoration, suicidal germination, terracing, transgenic crops, trap crops, and urban agriculture.
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