IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENT ON AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOLAPUR DISTRICT
Agriculture must also be sustainable. In the past, many parts of the developing world have suffered from overgrazing and the loss of soil fertility through intensive food production. This has often led to the spread of deserts and to a growing interest in developing farming practices for use in arid environments.
The developing world, which encompasses nearly two-thirds of the world’s cultivated area and four-fifths of its population, produces only two-fifths of the world food supply. The adverse effect of pollutants, which result from agricultural, and socio cultural developments are of paramount importance to developing countries, which possess essentially agrarian economies. However, since agricultural development is not the only type of development involved in the total development of rural areas, it is difficult to isolate environmental problems resulting solely from agriculture from the problems resulting from rural-based industry and settlement. In most countries the level of rural industrialization is low and increasing slowly, but emissions and effluents from some industrial complexes are already causing some harm to men, animals, and cultivated lands. Many industries, which may pollute the environment, are related to agricultural development (e.g., fertilizer factories, sugar factories and oil or pulp mills, and textile mills and tanneries). Thus, in developing agricultural programs it will be necessary to enlist the support of experts in devising low-cost technology for pollution control. In most developing countries, traditional agricultural practices are not able to overcome the threats of plant pests (which inflict annual crop losses of between 33 and 46 percent), the menace of water logging and salinity (which reduce seriously the production potential of agricultural lands), and the unregulated systems of marketing agricultural produce (which result in enormous quantitative and qualitative losses of produce). At present most agricultural yields fall far below their potential. A low level of scientific technology in both plant and animal husbandry is one of the major causes of these sub-optimum yields of produce per acre or per animal. Such losses and low yields cause shortages in the food supply which may usher in unethical trade practices and lower the quality of life in all agrarian communities.
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