The world is already facing a huge crisis when it comes to food security. It is predicted that the global population will reach 9 billion by the year 2050. This century’s challenge is to protect our future from the impacts of climate change, environmental pollution, and other disasters while producing enough food to satisfy the demands of an increasing population.
Current intensive farming practices are leading to soil degradation, and the overuse of chemicals for producing and protecting our crops is impacting planetary and human health. We must rethink and reshape our agricultural practices from the last few decades to prepare for the future. However, to provide solutions in the form of sustainable agriculture, farmers, innovators, researchers, scientists, and sustainable leaders. All need to work together to achieve the goal of SDG2 (Zero hunger).
Governments are already planning to impose restrictions on synthetic pesticides by 2% annually and to promote biopesticides by 10% annually. Achieving these targets will necessitate novel innovations that provide new effective, practical, and sustainable alternatives. Thankfully, our scientists and researchers are developing new techniques and strategies for the implementation of sustainable agriculture.
Here, in this article, we will discuss why biopesticides offer hope for the future of sustainable agriculture, and how farmers can increase high crop yield and enhance soil nutrients while reducing pest-related pollution. First, however, we need to understand why sustainable agriculture is needed.
Why Mother Earth Needs Sustainable Agriculture
Imagine we are in the year 2050, and the human population has increased by 0.8 billion per decade. To feed those human beings, we are constantly increasing our crop yield between 3% to 5% annually. We are using the help of chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides to boost our production.
Due to excessive waste from toxic fertilizers and chemical pesticides, the soil is contaminated, and it has less and fewer nutrients. Due to poor soil quality, farming for most crops has become impossible, and human survival is reliant on a few remaining crops that will grow in those inhospitable conditions. Even the crops produced in these harsh conditions are infused with chemicals, and not fit for human consumption by today’s standards.
It has led to food shortages, and people are dying of hunger all over the world, especially in developing countries where populations are high. The widespread use of chemical pesticides has resulted in the desertification of parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Future generations don’t want pesticide residues in their food, but traces of chemicals are found everywhere – even in their own bodies.
They are unable to solve these complex problems and save themselves.
This dystopian scenario is not hypothetical. We are already seeing the start of this future. Unless we act now to change the way in which we treat our planet, the future is very bleak indeed. A key part of the solution must be to reduce chemical usage in agriculture and to replace those toxic products with sustainable, natural solutions.
Biological agriculture (BioAg) is the science of growing and protecting food using natural methods. Biofertilizers, biostimulants, and bioprotectants (also known as biopesticides, and biocontrol) combine to create a sustainable system in which crops are nurtured and protected within a sphere of natural balance that does not harm our planet and does not harm us.
Future Potential Of BioProtection
BioProtection will remain an important aspect in the future to control the pest population. We at Bionema research organic crop protection programs for safe and sustainable agriculture. Bionema works towards the commercialization of biopesticides, the use of which will protect the world from the residual effects of chemical pesticides.
Farmer’s profitability and cost reduction are top priorities for Bionema, when developing and producing biopesticides. Bionema’s scientists work to ensure the necessary steps to provide all our knowledge and research to farmers for a sustainable future.
BioProtection can be a boon to current and future agriculture, but it will face some hurdles in the journey. Some of the challenges of BioProtection are as follows:
- Biopesticides have enormous potential and one day might completely replace chemical pesticides. But it still requires more research in this space, and policymakers need to tighten the laws regarding the use of chemical pesticides.
- One of the challenges our expert scientists are combating is that the pests develop resistance towards pesticides, and more efficient dossiers are to be produced over time, whether it is biopesticide or chemical pesticides.
- Our world aims to reach “Zero hunger,” but this goal won’t be easy. We need to combine efforts, and global agro yield needs to increase. It’s not possible without BioProtection. Bionema is researching more efficient biopesticides to control this threat because agriculture is directly or indirectly related to most of the sustainable goals.
- One of the challenges in the commercialization of biopesticides is that regulatory authorities don’t have enough knowledge and expertise – most Competent Authorities still assess bioprotectants as if they are chemicals, using inappropriate assessment processes that present obstacles to approval and market access.
Controlling pest populations in an eco-friendly way is possible with Bionema’s products & services. Bionema is a leading biopesticide technology developer and believes in planet over profitability. Pesticides are harmful to the environment and can even cause many human health hazards such as blindness, nausea, cancer, and other reproductory problems.
Our team is led by Dr. Minshad Ansari (CEO & Founder of Bionema). Under his expert guidance, we are innovating and developing patented technologies and substances that are essential for the development of sustainable agriculture.
Dr. Ansari is constantly researching green alternatives to replace chemical pesticides from agriculture and to make agriculture healthy and toxic-free once again. Through his extensive research on the subject, we develop microorganisms to protect farms from pests.
Bionema aims to solve current and future agriculture challenges, and problems at the global level, and to serve the farmers’ community in the most eco-friendly and economical way possible that’s the reason Dr. Ansari founded The World BioProtection Forum to connect academia and industry to work together for the acceleration of BioProtection.
Conclusion
The future of sustainable agriculture looks bright with BioProtection. We will be able to grow crops without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. This is the primary goal of BioProtection.
Replacing synthetic pesticides completely with BioProtection will not be an easy task. But we can overcome these obstacles by increasing production efficiency, and advancement in research in the field of nanotechnology, drone technology, and omics technology is required.
It’s time to ditch pesticides and other harmful chemical inputs and replace them with biopesticides and natural pest control strategies.
BioProtection is a combination of techniques that involve using beneficial microbes in place of harmful chemical inputs for controlling pests on farms. These techniques use microbes that are already present on the farm or in the surrounding environment to fight off pests instead of relying on artificial pesticides.
