For as long as we can remember plants have played a huge role in our lives. Whether it be for food, medicine, or other things we have always depended on them. As time has progressed we have found many ways to alter plants to fulfill our needs. Domestication began almost 12,000 years ago and hasnt stopped since then. We have made it something that we will depend on for the rest of our life and that will not change. What we can change is how sustainable we keep it but we will talk about it as we keep reading.
As years have gone by and our food needs have changed there have been more domesticated plants but also more problems in our environment such as climate change. Thanks to climate change we have had to make so many alterations to our pest- and disease-resistant varieties, for a very narrow set of selected crops. Which is why as of right now 60% of the world’s food energy and supply come from rice, wheat, maize, and potato. Out of the 391,100 plants that have been discovered only 30,000 of them are edible. So far we have only cultivated 5,538 to meet our food requirements but who knows how many more we will cultivate as our food needs change. However, we should hope that we don’t need to cultivate more innocent plants and just keep it at the amount we are at or maybe even lowering it. We also really need to consider how to make pesticides and anything that is required for agriculture more affordable for farmers in different areas of the world seeing that we are not all economically stable. However I truly believe that if these resources become more affordable we could possibly make a change when it comes to world hunger.
I just hope that as time progresses we don’t keep relying on technology to do the work for us because that’s how farming started, people started to like the idea of just growing food and preferred to plant food instead of hunting. Which then led to more ideas on how we could innovate on technology and as mentioned before technology isn’t accessible for everyone so we have to keep in mind that we have to keep agriculture affordable. If we don’t keep it affordable we could be doing more damage than good. Thanks to agriculture we have been able to teach many countries how to create their own food system and grow food for their country but if we keep making things that require us to use expensive technology we could really be hurting those who strongly depend on agriculture and the domestication of plants.
As I continued to investigate what it truly meant to be sustainable and I truly meant, I came down to the conclusion that sustainability is the ability to maintain an ecological balance. With all the research that we have done and learned about we can conclude and trust that domestication of plants can be beneficial for many people if we ever had an animal shortage and had to depend on planting but it is also beneficial to teach to those who are in low income countries. Planting has benefited all of us and what we need to do is lower our carbon footprint so we don’t have to worry about climate change and having to constantly create pesticides that could cost us thousands or even billions of dollars. Like mentioned before not all countries are as rich as other countries and can afford what some of us can. So I guess what I am trying to say is that if we keep it to the point where we maybe don’t cultivate that many plant species and lower our carbon footprint to prevent more issues with climate change we can truly make domestication of plants as sustainable as it can be. We can make a difference. We just have to be as economically concerned for other countries and not just think about ourselves. Change will occur and we will be the change our world needs.
Works Cited
Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search?q=agriculture&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS918US918&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKo_Cj-vvrAhUQS6wKHdmTD-4Q_AUoAnoECB4QBA&biw=1340&bih=737#imgrc=0IquIbHmkNpelM.
Moyers, Brook T, et al. “Genetic Costs of Domestication and Improvement.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 4 Aug. 2017, academic.oup.com/jhered/article/109/2/103/4064635#111340815.
National Geographic Society. “Domestication.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/domestication/.
Zeder, Melinda A. “Core Questions in Domestication Research.” PNAS, National Academy of Sciences, 17 Mar. 2015, www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3191.