With the rise of the population, more farmers need help to meet food production demands. Because of this, some take shortcuts to manage their daily tasks caring for the land and their animals.
However, these shortcuts can harm their business, public health, and the environment. As a result, sustainable farming techniques have become popular to help maintain a healthy balance of producing crops, meeting demand, and protecting the land.
If you want to learn how to incorporate sustainable farming methods into your business, you’re at the right place. In this post, you’ll find the best strategies to implement sustainable farming practices.
What Is Sustainable Farming?
It is a method of producing crops and animals using techniques that protect the environment. Unlike factory farms, sustainable farmers avoid using chemicals and specific strategies known to cause health problems and harm the land.
All over the world, more farmers are switching their techniques to ensure they’re following the best practices in producing food. Since the switch, not only are farmers realizing the benefits, but so are consumers.
According to data, sustainable farming is expected to grow 9.9% by 2030. This is due to the high demand of people wanting more organic food.
People care more about their food being grown ethically and not harming animals inhumanely. As a result, sustainable farming is becoming increasingly popular, and farmers must look for ways to incorporate these methods into their operations.
5 Strategies to Incorporate for Sustainable Farming
Knowing how to start a new practice can be challenging if you’re used to doing things the old way. However, these five strategies below are simple and can easily be incorporated into your daily tasks as a farmer.
1. Promote Soil Health
The foundation of sustainable farming lies in the health of the soil. If your farm’s soil health is low, it’ll be hard for you to produce crops without chemicals.
To effectively produce healthy soil, you must learn to work with the ground and not against it. This will involve reducing erosion, improving nutrient cycling, and maximizing water infiltration.
Of course, this will involve you being outside on your tractor all day. To help protect you from the sun, be sure to add a Kubota tractor canopy. Just because you’re working hard to make your farm sustainable doesn’t mean you should risk your health.
2. Make Use of the Farm’s Natural Pest Predators
Sustainable farms avoid using harsh chemicals in their crops to prevent their adverse environmental and health impacts. Unfortunately, this requires farmers to search for other ways to protect their crops from annoying pests.
One way to do this is to look into your farm ecosystem to know the natural predators of your common pests. For example, nematodes are one of the most significant pests on farms.
These parasites breed with the crops and attach to their roots. As the crop grows, so does the pest.
The attachment allows the nematode to feed off the plant and reproduce. As a result, the crop becomes uneatable, and farmers lose money.
Because of the way in which these pests attack the crops, it’s hard for farmers to control them without using harsh chemicals. However, you can quickly eliminate them by sharing the land with their natural predators.
For example, most birds eat nematodes and other worm species. So it’ll be an excellent idea to entice more birds to visit your farm by adding more birdhouses or nesting boxes.
After interacting with the items, they’ll be ready to feed off your land. As a result, you’ll have fewer nematodes to deal with.
3. Diversify Your Crops
You’ll encounter many unexpected problems while running a farm, and often, they’ll happen out of nowhere. For example, many farmers must combat harsh weather conditions, create new products, and increase their input costs.
This is challenging to do when your soil’s levels are unhealthy. And since we didn’t give you tips above on promoting healthy soil levels, here’s one: diversify your crops.
You do this by rotating crops within a recently used plotting area. You’ll add a new plant within a plot you used for different crop species. The sustainable practice allows farmers to combat unexpected challenges and boost soil health.
4. Integrate Your Animal and Crop Systems
Animals and plants were once closely intertwined in the production system of farms. In other words, farmers understood the importance of bringing two systems together.
Since WWII, farmers in America have separated how they operate their animals and plant production. This could be one of the reasons why farmers are dealing with economic and environmental risks now.
However, if more farmers integrate these two systems, they could lower these risks and reap many benefits. Some of this includes boosting diversification and recycling nutrients for the environment.
5. Take a New Approach to Land Management
The biggest challenge that farmers face is the increasing cost of the waste of resources. Sustainability farming allows you to work with the natural ecosystem of your land to create a closed-loop system.
The system ensures nothing is wasted, and everything is used within the farm production. Farming this way prevents you from wasting your resources and creates eco-friendly habits on the farm.
Start Implementing These Sustainable Farming Practices
As more demand is put on farmers for food, it increases the risk of harming our environment. As a result, more farmers are changing how they operate to combat our current crisis.
Sustainable farming practices help us protect our world and provide healthy food for everyone. Use these ideas to make your farm more eco-friendly.
