5 Sustainable Agriculture Methods

A sustainable farming system doesn’t have to be only organic agriculture. There are more methods that overlap in many principles that are sustainable in the long run and maybe 100 percent organic or at least from the biggest part.

The following five sustainable farming methods and practices are just a few examples of the many ways that we can achieve much more sustainable agriculture.

Permaculture

Permaculture is a design system that applies principles that are found in nature to the development of human settlements, allowing humanity to live in harmony with the natural world. Permaculture principles and ethics can be applied to almost any area of living, including local economies, energy systems, water supplies, housing systems, and food production.

Foundational to producing food through permaculture is intention, design, and “working smarter not harder” to banish waste and to create efficient systems.

There is a particular emphasis on the use of perennial crops such as fruit trees, nut trees, and shrubs that all function together in a designed system that mimics how plants in a natural ecosystem would function.

Permaculture design techniques include herb spirals, hugelkultur garden beds, keyhole and mandala gardens, sheet mulching, growing grain without tillage, each plant serving multiple purposes, and creating swales on contour to hold water high on the landscape.

Hydroponics and aquaponics

These innovative farming techniques involve the growing of plants without soil, nourishing the plants through specialized nutrients that are added to water.

In hydroponic systems, crops are grown with the roots directly in a mineral solution or with the roots in an inert medium like gravel or perlite.

Aquaponics combines the raising of aquatic animals (such as fish) with the growing of hydroponic crops. In aquaponic systems, the water containing the waste material from the aquaculture fish is used to nourish the hydroponic plants. After the water is used by the plants, the water is then recirculated back into the system to be reused by the fish.

Both hydroponic and aquaponic systems are available in a variety of scales, from small home-scale systems to commercial-scale systems.

Urban agriculture

The need to localize our food system requires that we grow food much closer to home, including in cities. Since most of the global population is predicted to live in cities in the future, there is a tremendous opportunity for urban agriculture to make a significant positive impact moving forward when it comes to how we produce our food around the world.

Today, many innovative and sustainable growing techniques are already being used in cities, including backyard farms and gardens, community gardens, rooftop farms, growing crops in urban greenhouses, indoor hydroponic farms, and perhaps even growing food inside urban farm towers someday.

Agroforestry and food forests

Agroforestry involves the growth of trees and shrubs amongst crops or grazing land. Agroforestry systems can combine both agriculture and forestry practices for long-lasting, productive, and diverse land use when approached sustainably.

In agroforestry systems, trees create a favorable microclimate that maintains favorable temperature and soil humidity, while protecting crops from wind or heavy rain. Trees have another important role. They stabilize soils, minimize nutrient runoff and improve soil structure. This is the reason why agroforestry has become one of the powerful tools of farmers in dry regions with soils susceptible to desertification.

Besides promoting healthy growth of food crops and maintaining soil fertility, trees in this farming system provide wood and fruits as an additional source of income for farmers. In these systems, possibilities for product diversification are many. Farmers can go even as far as growing a whole edible forest.

Patterned after natural forest ecosystems, food forests (also known as “forest gardens”) are designed permaculture systems that consist of a multilayered edible “forest.” Such a “forest” is composed almost entirely of perennial food plants, including a canopy of tall and dwarf fruit and nut trees, a fruit shrub layer, layers of perennial herbs, mushrooms, and vegetables at the ground level, climbing plants, and root vegetables underground.

Food forest systems are very productive, due to both the diversity of plants that are growing there, and all of the plants within the system that is taking advantage of each existing niche within the system.

Mulching, groundcovers, and manual weed control

Farmers and other growers can dramatically reduce the growth of weeds and conserve soil moisture by covering the soil around their plants through the use of mulching and ground covers.

By naturally suppressing weed growth, these practices greatly reduce, or in some cases even eliminate, the need to apply herbicides to kill weeds. And the most stubborn weeds that appear from time to time can be easily controlled by hand because their numbers are minimized.

We can see this practice widely applied on strawberry fields where plants need to have larger spacing between them, which would give the opportunity for weeds to take over. A layer of protective material on top of the soil even keeps strawberries from rotting too fast, as they do not lay directly on the hard soil while ripening. Afterall, as their name suggests “straw-berries,” people have known about the benefits of growing these yummy fruits surrounded by the straw ground cover for many generations.

Organic mulch material like, for example, wood chips, straw or grass clippings also improves nutrient retention in soils and encourages activity of soil microorganisms that help create healthy aerated soil structure. This reduces the need for tillage as soils are less compacted.