While there are many unsustainable practices that various industries use to maximize profit, soil degradation caused by unsustainable agriculture is among the biggest, but also solvable, problems. Unsustainable agriculture includes numerous practices such as monoculture, overuse of water, clearing a field entirely all contribute to soil degradation, and many more.
Monoculture is an example of why biodiversity is important. Covering a field with all of the same crop, which takes away biodiversity since that field was originally covered with a diverse array of species before agriculture claimed it, will deplete the soil of the same nutrients that the specific species requires more of, causing the soil to become more and more infertile. This is not sustainable because once the land is depleted, more land will just be taken elsewhere to grow more. While it may seem like a simple concept with many readily available solutions, approximately four and a half million acres are still being used for monoculture in the USA alone, which means a lot more land will be taken in the future once that soil is depleted. Additionally, monoculture means all the crops share the same cycle, so the field will be cleared all at once, leaving room for water and wind to erode the topsoil, the most fertile part of the soil. Since the topsoil becomes eroded, the planting ground becomes even more infertile.
One example of a simple solution to this is alley cropping. This strategy tackles both the loss of biodiversity and soil erosion issue. Alley cropping is having different rows on a field containing different plants with minimized repetition. Each row will not use the same nutrient in the soil, so there can be balance and time for the soil to replenish its nutrients through natural processes. There will also be less soil erosion because the different plants have different cycles, so they are picked at different times, meaning the field will never be completely cleared. A field even half filled still provides plenty of wind protection from soil erosion.
Overwatering plants has a less straightforward solution because the more efficient and sustainable method does come at a higher price. Overwatering crops causes a greater percentage of the water to not percolate or sink into the ground before it evaporates, leaving more solutes than water, so salinization occurs, degrading the soil. However, if we use methods like drip irrigation of LEPA sprinklers, which are more expensive than the traditional flood and furrow method or spray method, we can reduce soil degradation and use the same soil to grow crops for a significantly longer amount of time.
All in all, it is clear that the solutions to make agriculture have already been found and are being implemented more and more across the world. All we need to do is continue spreading this through education and awareness to speed up the process of making agriculture sustainable again.
This is an example of what degraded soil can look like. In this case, desertification seems to have taken place.
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