Sustainable growth in agriculture

In agriculture, the sustainability approach continues to be growth in terms of agricultural productivity while maintaining the quantity and quality of the resources needed in agriculture, in that sense, it implies using renewable resources at rates lower than those at which they are generated, emitting waste at rates lower than those at which they can be absorbed by the environment and optimizing the efficiency with which renewable resources are used. This vision of sustainability takes into account the predictable increases in the demand for food that derives from the constant increase in population and income, sustainable agriculture must consider the successful management of agricultural resources to meet changing human needs while maintaining or improving the quality of the environment and conserving natural resources.

At the level of agroecosystems, any conception of sustainability needs research and production to seek not only results in relation to high yields on each plot, but to optimize the system as a whole, this requires harmonizing economic viability and other variables, such as ecological stability and sustainability. A form or a mode of production that contributes at the level of agricultural systems to obtaining agricultural sustainability is organic agriculture in the sense that it avoids the use of external resources, that seeks the optimization of recycling and that does not incorporate chemical compounds of residual effect in productive management that have a polluting effect on the system and on food for human consumption.

The organic production of food at the production level, together with agroecology as a scientific-technological framework, is a real fact, which works and is widely disseminated in different agroecological areas with different climatic situations, in recent years, there are various accumulated experiences especially at the producer level, and knowledge is being generated on the subject permanently, therefore the current problem is to establish strategies of change from conventional agriculture to one based on agroecological, in reasonable periods of time and with the lowest cost for the producers participating in these processes.

The transformation of conventional agricultural practices towards agroecological practices has currently been referred to as regenerative agriculture that seeks to maintain the balance of natural resources in the agroecosystem. To achieve a positive change towards regenerative agriculture, some methodologies can be followed, such as the one mentioned by Venegas (S.f), which is mentioned below.

First of all, the so-called efficiency increase stage where systems are modified in the sense of reducing the consumption of scarce resources and lowering production costs. also at this stage, pest monitoring and control could be carried out in integrated management programs. It is about achieving high levels of efficiency in the use of resources, particularly the agricultural environment in terms of managing it by reducing the rates of physical deterioration and pollution associated with agricultural production processes.

Then the substitution stage can be established, in this stage it is proposed to eliminate the use of agrochemicals by replacing them with organic or biological based compounds and elements that do not negatively impact the environment. It is classic the replacement in organic systems of synthetic nitrogen sources by organic alternatives such as manure, compost, green manures, manure. Another example in relation to this step is the substitution of synthetic biocides by other ecocompatibles such as Nim, Trichogrammas, fungi of the genus Bauveria and Metarrhizium, respectively.

Finally, dear readers, the redesign stage that seeks the design of agricultural systems in which animal and plant populations are made to act seeking to simulate or replace the relationships that occur in nature. With the diversification of agricultural systems, there is an increase in the number and diversity of populations, especially species with control capacity, generating an environment that allows some populations of importance in the internal regulation mechanisms of the systems to become endemic. At this stage, the spatial and temporal diversification of crops and the recycling of agricultural waste are enhanced. It is necessary to consider the soil as a system that permanently demands the biochemical and/or energetic stimulus of organic matter.