China Takes Big Step Toward Sustainable Agriculture

Food security and environmental degradation are the two primary and closely interlinked challenges the world will face in the next few decades, writes Akshit Sangomla on DownToEarth.org. According to the United States Environment Protection Agency, 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, forestry and land use, second only to electricity and heat production, which are at 25%.

China seems to be making big strides to balance the twin objectives of adequate food production and environmental conservation. The country has undertaken a massive project to make farming on smaller pockets of land more sustainable through management practices. A recent report published in the journal Nature cites that the project was able to reach 20.9 million farmers across 452 counties in the country between 2005 and 2015. This covered a total area of 37.7 million ha.

Advertisement

The project first conducted 13,123 field trials in different agro-ecological zones in China. This helped them evolve localised models for soil-crop system management. They used a decision support system called the Integrated Soil Crop System Management (ISSM) to conduct these trials. This massive outreach to farmers in China was made possible by the huge network of 1,152 researchers, 65,000 extension agents and 130,000 agribusiness personnel.

Read more at DownToEarth.org.

Top Articles
ADAMA Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Results

Hide picture