Dear Dr. Kidanemariam,

This is an important question. To feed the growing population and put the country at a subsequent economic rank, more land is brought into agriculture in developing countries. In this concern, extensive rangelands are leased to investors, and these investors unwisely intrude into forestlands. small-scale farmers are also pushed off fertile lands, and have little choice other than to move further into the forests. This virgin land is brought into cultivation, what follows extensification. This is widely practiced in may areas along the East African Rift Valley system. Under this rapid land grabbing, sustainable development is threatened, and may remain for the future until the expected development is reached. Environmental Kuznets curve explains this very well, but still an arguable issue.

By default, smallholders used to practice inorganic fertilizer. In fact, this could not secure the livelihoods of the booming population. As a response, these farmers (e.g. in northern Ethiopia) are forced to fully apply inorganic fertilizers. Also, the different flower industries, for example in Ethiopia, aggressively and excessively use inorganic fertilizers. With less awareness and management in practice, such intensifications could harm our environment.

As to me, better farming technology, environmental education and responsive citizen could make production so profitable. Here, the scientific communities believe that “sustainable intensification rests on an implicit logic that intensifying production on the land already in use will be a feasible and effective strategy to prevent the further encroachment of agriculture into virgin lands”. If we do need to grow more food, intensifying sustainably could be a better way out. I share on the emerging argument that “knowledge intensification is paramount important than input intensification”.

With best regards,

Hailemariam

Going fast forward to the point, of course totally agreed on Hailemariam's note, the key issue here is to identify the optimal combination of land for agricultural production and conservation use. Intensifying inputs such as inorganic fertilizer and other would not enhance land productivity continuously. More over, this highly devastate ecosystem services that are key for agricultural system itself. On the other hand, with limited land availability, we can not afford to spare large area of land for conservation. For me the way forward is to promote agricultural system where land is used for multifunctional services considering the three components of ecosystem services (production, biodiversity, water storage, water purification, soil quality), and identify which level of intensification and conservation support this objective.

best regards,

wuletawu

Good responses ...

We need a comprehensive land use planning in line with land resource inventories in a farming system mode to address issues related to different land holdings and agroecological settings...

Dear Researchers,

As suggested by Dr. Wuletavu and Dr. Srivastava, It becomes need of the hour to adopt integrated methodology of agriculture such as Agri-Horti-Silviculture or Agroforestry which are more sustainable as compared to intensive or traditional agri practices.

Definitely, integration is indispensable for sustainability.

The Solar Corridor concept is one attempt to achieve

the worthy goals suggested in previous answers to the important question.

A Solar Corridor Symposium being drafted for submission to the 2018 ASA-CSSA-Annual

Meeting in Baltimore could be an outstanding forum to offer your intellectual contributions.

Best regards,

C. LeRoy Deichman

The loss of soil productivity by depletion of the soil N (and P) will remain a severe environmental problem, It may also lead to further forest clearing to compensate for the production loss. Re-cycling of human waste, a major N source in many river basins of developing countries is not a common practice but could be an option for reducing ongoing nutrient depletion of the arable land in many developing countries. Apart from the overall increases in fertilizer use and livestock production, there is also a global trend towards concentration of certain agricultural activities in peri-urban areas . This will lead to large local surpluses of N and P from animal manure and associated losses to aquatic systems and the atmosphere, hence, turning non-point source pollution into a more local problem

This is a very interesting question because this problem was universal one so that developing countries take this issue in consideration and planned seriously for what to do in the following years to face it ,here is i am putting a pending file related with this issue:

I found these materials so interesting and relating to you questions. Kindly take time to go through them and see if it is helpful. Good luck.

We have done this for over 3 decades. It is possible to do sustainable, profitable, agriculture and nourish the population. One must take care of the soil. If that part is taken care of, actually it will sustain the population living on it. As many having given responses already have pointed out, there are interests that are difficult to counter, and there are situations where urgency is high. But sustainability is never reach under pressure.

We need to fix the waste of food across the globe in parallel to other actions.

The key lies in adopting the more efficient technologies in the field, so that the strain on natural resources is eased. Environmentally sustainable agricultural practices are now available, and it is essential that these information are are widely disseminated and promoted.

of course, Srivastava has explained well.

It can only be done using and applying the new revolution in agriculture, the agricultural mechatronics, since this is friendly to the environment,

the use of this emerging technology increases productivity and is sustainable, you can check my articles and my books on the subject.

Nowdays , especially in the context post climate , agriculture production and economic sustainability are inseparable..

Negrete explained well, mechanization and resource use efficiency have significant effect on production, so there better management could lead to Enviornment friendly agricultur. You may check my paper, on food production systems.

Mechanization and resource use efficiency have significant effect on production, so there better management could lead to Environment friendly agriculture. You may check my paper, on food production systems.

Thanks

The solution is intellectually easy but socially difficult. Stop global population growth. Failing that, the population will eventually outgrow the availability of food and water. If this does not happen in your country it will be your neighbors. We have escaped Malthus by improving technology. However, it is easy to make an improvement in a process that is inefficient. Once those inefficiencies are corrected, further improvement is more challenging. While we shall try, I do not expect production improvement in the next 100 years like we saw in the past 100 years. As population levels grow, all the ills of human civilization will grow as well.

Mechanization and resource use efficiency have significant effect on production, so there better management could lead to Environment friendly agriculture. Environmentally sustainable agricultural practices are now available, and it is essential that this information are widely disseminated and promoted. Feeding a growing and increasingly affluent population is clashing with efforts to conserve habitat and natural resources. Sustainable intensification, an effort to increase crop yields with fewer inputs and without expanding land use, seeks to balance these priorities. However, agriculture is focused on the working of soil and other facilities to produce crops, animals and trees for human consumption or further refinement into products, while industry is focused more on refining and processing raw materials into products for sale.