October 27, 2011
In 1970, the world’s population was 3.3 billion. Forty years later, it’s surpassed 6.6 billion. By 2050, it is expected to increase to 9.4 billion. As the population has grown, so agriculture has evolved, developing new practices to feed more people with the same amount of available farmland.
BASF talked to everyday consumers to get their thoughts on this situation, and growers from Arkansas to Minnesota to North Carolina answered the public’s questions about sustainability in a new video, “The Conservation Conversation.” In agriculture, sustainability isn’t an unattainable dream; it is an ever-improving reality.
Over the past 70 years, growers have gone from supporting 19 people per farmer to feeding 155 people per farmer. Evolving farming methods have always been essential to increased, sustainable productivity — putting organic matter back into the soil; reducing soil erosion and fertilizer use; and utilizing new, groundbreaking technologies.
For instance, Bo Stone, a grower from Rowland, N.C., featured in the video, uses new technology to analyze the soil and deliver variable rates of fertilizer to each field based on “what it needs, where it needs and exactly how much it needs.”
These growers know how important it is to treat the land well.
“It becomes almost like part of the family,” said Scott Rahn of Bingham Lake, Minn. “I look at it as a book, as a novel, and my lifetime, it’s going to be a chapter in that novel.”
These growers and others have more to say in the video, which is available on the BASFAgProducts YouTube page. Be sure to watch the video and pass it along to friends and family. Share how growers are planning to sustain their land for years to come.
“Sustainability — it’s leaving the land better than we found it, which benefits not only our farm here, but the community in general,” said Bob Allen, a grower from Russellville, Ky., featured in the video.