What are Major Challenges in Agriculture?
Agriculture has always been an essential part of our humankind. It is the ultimate source that feeds, nurtures & sustains the lifestyle while bringing ecological balance.
The agricultural sector provides livelihood to 80% of the population today. It is the utmost source of food, fibre, and fuel. Moreover, it’s a powerful mode to generate employment and income opportunities for marginalised farmers. However, the agriculture sector is still under concern as various challenges threaten the ecosystem.
So, let’s bring to light some challenges or concerns that are hampering the growth of the agriculture sector. Moreover, let’s also talk about the initiatives or solutions to solve them. Or how farming tractors of premium horsepower like John Deere 5050d can help combat these challenges up to a level.
Key Factors Impacting Agricultural Yield
Here are some factors that are challenging agricultural practices & yield.
- Climate change
Changing climatic and weather conditions are the biggest concerns for the agriculture sector. The increasing urbanisation and use of carbon-producing products have started disturbing the weather.
The phenomenon ultimately affects crop yield, water availability and soil quality. This makes it difficult for farmers to produce quality crops to meet the rising population’s demand. Moreover, challenging weather events such as droughts, floods, and hurricanes temper the crop’s growth.
- Land degradation
Land degradation is another common atrocity that hampers crop production. With continuous work on fields, soil loses fertility and ultimately becomes less productive. Moreover, other factors like soil erosion, water scarcity, and a declining supply of nutrition also contribute to land degradation.
Using optimum weighted and horsepower tractors like John Deere 5310 can greatly help avoid land degradation and soil compaction.
- Water scarcity
Water scarcity is yet another important but underlooked challenge. Watering the field is immense to irrigate the field and grow the high-yielding crop. Many parts of the country have been majorly witnessing scarcity of water. The scarcity happens due to low groundwater tables, more frequency of droughts, overuse of natural water banks, climate change & unpredictable precipitation.
Farmers must use water resources efficiently to grow crops and increase their sustainability. The ideal solution to meet the shortage of water resources is adopting rainwater harvesting systems. With these systems, it’s easy to collect & store rain or run-off water and use it in times during less rainfall or any climatic predicament.
- Pest & disease management
Agricultural produce often falls victim to various pests & diseases. If pests & diseases are not managed with time, their existence can spread and harm/destroy the entire harvest. Certain types of pests & diseases can damage crops and reduce yield and overall quality.
Using natural-based herbicides or fungicides can help treat the growth of pests & diseases in the field. Moreover, treating the seeds before sowing with suitable chemicals will help prevent them.
- Food wastage
Food or crop wastage is another concerning challenge in agriculture. Do you know almost one-third of the world’s food produced gets wasted?
This food wastage occurs in different cycles, right from harvesting to transportation and final consumption. If we can address food insecurity by curbing food wastage, we can improve sustainability in the agriculture sector.
There are major challenges that restrict the full potential of the agriculture sector. These challenges are easy to solve only to some extent.
Final Words on Challenges in the Agriculture Sector!
Agriculture faces many challenges threatening its sustainability and how it will feed the population. Land degradation, climate change, fewer water resources, food wastage, water scarcity, and increasing pests and diseases are a few challenges that are interfering with the agricultural ecosystem. By working together with judicious planning and involving high-tech farm mechanisation solutions, we can definitely address this big-scale problem.
