What is sustainable agriculture and sustainable farming? Read more about the history of sustainable agriculture in South Africa.
Over the past 50 years, South African agriculture has created a system that is both economically and ecologically unsustainable. As a result, we’re depleting our natural resources —our arable land, rivers and species—at an unprecedented rate. Fortunately, in recent years, sustainable farming solutions are taking shape, ensuring that future growth will happen in more efficient and responsible ways. To look forward, we need to look back, which is why we’re taking a closer look at the history of sustainable agriculture in South Africa. First, we need to look at: what is sustainable farming?
We’re proud to say that our founding company, Zylem, has quietly been a part of this inexorable move, participating in educating the market and developing products to satisfy its expanding requirements. Now, RegenZ aims to discover, evaluate and implement improved sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices and products.
To understand the history and background of sustainable agriculture, we first need to understand what it is. Sustainable farming is just that—farming methods implemented now that we can continue to use effectively in the future. One aspect of sustainable farming involves returning good health to the soil whilst simultaneously reducing input costs and reliance on inorganic fertilisers.
Sustainable farming solutions are not reliant on strict organic principles; they utilise a mix of organic and inorganic inputs to produce biological soil conditioners and foliar feeds that work hand in hand with other methods such as worm farming, effective composting and green manuring.
Learn all about sustainable farming in our comprehensive guide.
Worldwide, the trend in agriculture is to revise the harmful practice of denuding the soil by plying it with more and more chemical substances. However, these substances do not enrich the soil, and it becomes more and more expensive each year to find a new chemical cocktail.
In South Africa, and worldwide, we need a more sustainable approach to avoid compromising the welfare of our nation. If agricultural industrialisation and intensification are mismanaged, this could result in increased environmental degradation and unemployment, and compromise food safety.
Sustainable agricultural practices work hard to enrich the soil with each successive season. The net result of effective sustainable farming practices is more nutrient-dense food, crops and livestock. It also means reduced or more predictable input costs as well as stabilised yields.
Interestingly, the modern organic movement and industrialised agriculture began simultaneously. As farmers used more chemicals and pesticides, so did the pioneers of the early organic movement start looking into new, non-chemical ways to make farming more sustainable.
Although organic farming is not the same as sustainable farming (sustainable farming can incorporate inorganic compounds), the philosophies are closely linked.
The background of the sustainable agriculture movement grew haphazardly during the last half of the 20th century, so it’s difficult to pin down a single “founder”. However, the originator of the term “sustainable agriculture” was said to be Gordon Lee McClymont, an Australian agricultural scientist, ecologist, and educationist known for his multidisciplinary approach to farm ecology. The term gained popularity in the late 1980s.
Although the idea of sustainable agriculture has been around since the turn of the century, most social scientists would see the origin of sustainable agriculture arising in 1987 from “Our Common Future”, a report by the World Commission on Environment and Development. Also known as the Bruntland report, the report made a strong case for the need for global cooperation to address the increasingly damaged environment and to place Sustainable Development on the world’s political agenda.
Today, the growing popularity of sustainable agriculture can be connected to the wide-reaching fear that the planet’s carrying capacity and ability to feed humanity has been reached, or even exceeded.
Here’s a brief timeline of the history of sustainable agriculture and organic farming:
1907
1920s
1939
1940
1950s
1962
1970s
1972
1980s
1987
2000s
2008
2014
2021
2022
Africa has a lot of people to feed, and using strains of crops that require agrochemical fertiliser, irrigation and pesticides increases yields. However, these methods also damage the environment and are unaffordable to manysmall-scale farmers. For this reason (and many others), sustainable farming solutions are the only way to ensure food security in Africa in the future.
South Africa is a country with a history of change, and we’ve proven ourselves to be an adaptable group of people. Once again, we need to draw on this strength we have as a nation in the form of coming together to implement sustainable agriculture solutions.
At RegenZ, we are passionate about the work we do, and we’d love to advise on solutions for your farm’s long-term sustainability. Get in touch for more information.
Sources:
Revisiting the Timeline of Organic Farming – Medium- https://medium.com/@InFPA/revisiting-the-timeline-of-organic-farming-e40e55898002
Sustaining African Agriculture Organic Production – UNCTAD – https://unctad.org/en/Docs/presspb20091rev1_en.pdf
A History of Sustainable Agriculture – https://eap.mcgill.ca/AASA_1.htm
AGRICULTURE: FACTS & TRENDS South Africa – http://awsassets.wwf.org.za/downloads/facts_brochure_mockup_04_b.pdf
Brookside Laboratories –https://www.blinc.com/history
Alex is Business Development Manager at RegenZ. He's inspired by the potential of regenerative farming and takes a special interest in the technology and products that are moving agriculture in a more sustainable direction.