Soil Management for Food Security.

 

Food security—a sufficient, stable, and affordable food supply— is determined by human and non-human factors. Management of agricultural lands often seeks to modify or control non-human environmental factors so as to support diverse (and often conflicting) objectives, such as extraction of resources, profitability, human survival, soil and water conservation, maintenance of wildlife habitat, food security, etc.  Agricultural management objectives have short and long term consequences that must be considered in devising global and national food security goals. Soil management practices relating to food security can be classified as exploitive, reactive, or proactive.  Exploitive management emphasizes rapid results and profitability, often to the detriment of soil conservation and long term food security.  Reactive management emphasizes intervention to correct past damage or to compensate for system weaknesses, often progressing toward sustainability. Proactive management takes a long-term view, seeking to prevent problems and to protect functioning landscapes by incorporating ecological principles. Our goal as soil scientists is to evaluate and develop soil management practices that balance short and long term objectives by fostering land use for food production while supporting critical environmental processes. In this presentation, specific examples will be used to illustrate exploitive, reactive, and proactive practices, including some costs and benefits of these approaches.