Supporting Local Farmers League To Grow Food Around The World

Published: 2021-04-12
Views: 470
Author: Marigold
Published in: Crop Production

If you go to a farm in every country, you'd find a lot of differences.

A cocoa plantation in Ghana, a wine vineyard in Italy, rice paddies in China, a wheat field in the United States, or a cattle ranch in Brazil is just some of the places you might see.

Farmers in different areas must adapt their growing practices to local conditions due to differences in climates, ecosystems, microorganisms, plants, and animals.

All farmers, on the other hand, depend on ecosystem services.

How do farmers grow food in different parts of the world?

Farmers who are familiar with local growing conditions would have an easier time growing crops (such as knowing when the rainy season starts, which crops grow well together, what nutrients the crop needs, and are these nutrients present in the soil).

Farmers often till the land after determining what to grow by loosening the soil and adding nutrient-rich fertilizers.

Then they plant seedlings or sow seeds. Farmers must water (or rely on rainfall) their crops, weed them, and destroy crops pests while they are growing.

The farmer will harvest the crops once they have reached maturity.

Farmers need labor in order to produce food. They need a wide range of resources. Land, air, nutrients, water, and sunlight are all-natural resources that farmers need.

Tools for farmers' use

Farmers need energy in order to work the land. To work in the field, farmers need human-made tools.

Some resources can be bought at the local market. So farmers also need money to buy resources that are not available on their land.

Growing crops without pollinators is hard, if not impossible, even with natural resources, energy, tools, and money.

Pollinators fertilize flowering crops by transferring pollen from one flower to another.

Insects, birds, small mammals, and even the wind and water can pollinate flowers.

The most common pollinator is the honeybee; it helps coffee flowers produce coffee beans in Columbia, mango flowers produce mangoes in India, passion fruit flowers produce passion fruits in Brazil, and watermelon flowers produce watermelons in China.

And don’t forget that honeybees also produce honey.

Growing crops

Have you ever wondered how farmers can grow healthy crops on the same piece of land, year after year, without using up all the nutrients in the soil?

Nutrient cycling is an important ecosystem service that allows nutrients to be used by several organisms and later returned to the soil to begin a new cycle.

In South Africa, farmers bring their sheep to large pastures for grazing.

The grasses and flowers in the pastures take up nutrients found in the soil through their roots.

The different species of grasses and plants take up different nutrients and transform them into vitamins and minerals.

When a sheep eats plants, the nutrients are transferred into its body and used for growth.

Some of the nutrients will not be absorbed by the animal and will pass through its digestive system.

Over time, worms, bacteria and other microorganisms will break down the nutrients in the sheep's poop or excrements providing fertilizers or manure and returning the nutrients to the soil.

The nutrients are now available for grasses and flowers, and a new cycle can begin.

Different types of farming

There are many different ways of growing crops and raising livestock that can be grouped into three broad categories: small-scale farming, industrial and mixed farming.

Small-scale farmers grow food for themselves, their families, and sometimes for the local market, if they have extra, using the resources they have.

They grow both local foods and common foods, such as maize.

Some small-scale farmers raise fish. Raising fish in captivity is called aquaculture.

Often small-scale farmers use their local or traditional knowledge to grow local foods. This knowledge is developed over generations and is tested and updated as conditions change.

Did you know that humankind’s oldest social activity is eating?

The traditional or local knowledge of small-scale farmers enables them to grow and raise many local plants and animals and to cook these foods in diverse ways.

Local plants are well adapted to the climate and growing conditions. Often many small-scale farmers share seeds within their communities.

For example, in Kenya, many farming communities usually gather after harvest time to share knowledge and trade seeds of local crops, including cowpeas, millet, sorghum, and squash.

Also, at these gatherings, people often share recipes for cooking diverse foods.

The other form is Industrial farming. It is a form of modern farming that combines technical, scientific, economic, and political methods to mass-produce food, like a factory.

Industrial farming needs many resources, such as tractors and pesticides that cannot be found on the farm, and must be bought. Industrial farmers sell their entire crop.

Most of the meat, dairy, grains, fruits, and vegetables bought at grocery stores around the world are produced from this type of farming.

An easy supply of mass-produced food at the grocery has changed the way people are eating in many regions of the world.

Many industrial farmers in Western Canada and the USA grow only grains, such as wheat, on a large area of land.

On this type of farm, the farmer must buy fertilizers to put nutrients back into the soil, seeds for a specific variety of wheat, pesticides to kill crop pests, and energy, such as gasoline or diesel, to run the machines.

In mixed farming systems, one type of sustainable farming is combined with herding, fishing or forestry activities.

In a closed mixed farming system, the “waste” products of each activity provide inputs to the others while producing a diverse range of nutritious food.

For example, in Zhejiang province of China, naturally flowing rivers stock rice paddies with a fish called carp, which is a major source of protein and income for farmers and their families.

Organic or ecological farming is a type of sustainable farming where on-farm renewable resources are used as much as possible. Some small-scale farmers are also organic farmers.

Organic farmers often buy fewer resources because they use methods with on-farm resources.

Sustainable farmers buy some pesticides to get rid of crop pests, but organic farmers will use several methods without pesticides to get rid of the same crop pest.

Often organic farmers sell their surplus foods at the local market.

References: 

Convention on Biology Diversity