Building a Sustainable and Resilient Agricultural System for a Changing Global Environment

摘要

The vast majority of scientists agree that in the coming decades, climate change will have profound impacts on the global environment. During this same time, the world population is expected to grow, and many developing regions of the world are poised to become more affluent. These changes will result in increased demand for food and other agricultural products. Agriculture is vulnerable to a number of impacts that are likely to occur as the global climate changes. Increased temperatures and changed rainfall patterns are likely to result in crop losses from drought, increases in disease and pest damage, and changes in growing seasons. Modern industrialized agriculture is comprised of monocultures, relies on heavy inputs of fossil fuel-derived pesticides and fertilizers, and requires fossil fuels for production, processing, and transportation machinery. As a consequence of these features, modern industrialized agriculture is particularly not well-suited to adapt to the changes that are likely to occur. Modeling agricultural systems on the types of ecologically resilient systems that occur in nature will reduce agriculture's vulnerability and improve its capacity to adapt.