Review on Organic Farming vs. Convectional Farming System (Published)

Organic farming is a type of agriculture or farming which avoids the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators, and livestock feed additives. Organic standards are designed to allow the use of naturally occurring substances while prohibiting or strictly limiting synthetic substance. Organic farming is an important topic for society, so this paper shows some results arisen from a wider research on economic and environmental sustainability of organic farming. It focuses on organic and conventional farming comparison through different information and review. In this review, we examine the debate surrounding the role for organic agriculture in future food production systems. Typically represented as a binary organic and conventional question, this debate perpetuates an either/or mentality. We question this framing and examine the organic and conventional cropping systems comparisons. The review assesses current knowledge about how these cropping systems compare across a range of metrics related to for sustainability goals: productivity, environmental health, economic viability, and quality of life. We conclude by arguing for reframing the debate, recognizing that farming systems fall along gradients between three philosophical poles industrial, agrarian, and ecological and that different systems will be appropriate in different contexts. Regardless of evidence for lower yields in organic crop systems, we found considerable evidence for environmental and social benefits. Given these advantages, and the potential for improving organic systems, we come back calls for increased investment in organic and ecologically based farming systems research and extension.

 

Keywords: Sustainability, agro ecology, cropping system, debate, diversified farming food production, synthetic

Determinants of Agricultural Sustainability in Southeast Nigeria -The Climate Change Debacle (Published)

The renewed quest for sustainable economic development which is synonymous with sustainable agricultural development and hence agricultural sustainability impelled this study titled “Determinants of Agricultural Sustainability in Southeast Nigeria”. Southeast Nigeria is located within latitudes 5oN to 6o N of the equator and longitudes 6oE and 8oE of the Greenwich (prime) meridian (M.S corporation, 2009). Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a sample of 312 cassava based food crop farmers from whom data were collected using structured and validated questionnaire. Data bothering on the respondents’ socio-economic characteristics, the type, quantity, and sources of inputs used and output produced were collected. These were analysed with the use of descriptive statistical tools and ordinary least square multiple regression analytical tools. Result showed that factors such as farm size, annual income, household size, level of education, and climate change are significantly and inversely proportional to sustainability level of farmers, while labour cost was significantly but directly proportional to agricultural sustainability. It was concluded that, efforts should be made at both micro and macro levels of government to improve on the mitigation and adaptive strategies of climate change available to farmers by making such more affordable, available and user friendly through extension education on the appropriate uses of such technologies in a more sustainable manner.

Keywords: Adaptive and Mitigation, Appropriate, Climate Change, Determinants, Regression, Sustainability