International conference on Agriculture and Food Sustainability September 02-03, 2019 Rome, Italy

Track 1: Agriculture

Agriculture is the science and art of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs, sheep and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture into the twenty-first. Agriculture forms the base of an economy. In history civilizations have always flourished around regions of high agricultural yield nearer to rivers. Agriculture forms the backbone of any economy. Without a strong agricultural base a nation will always find it difficult to sustain its economic growth. This is primarily because it will not be able to meet the food demands of the economy. Not only does it sustain the state's food requirements but it also acts as a huge source of employment.

Track 2: Significance of Agriculture

Agriculture plays a pivotal role in the growth of any state. The primary sector of an economy comprises agricultural and other activities and contributes a significant amount to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Agriculture provides raw materials to several industries that type the backbone of the state. Agriculture is the most important occupation for most of the population either directly or indirectly. Agriculture contributes more income and revenue to the major countries and most developing countries across the world. It is not the source of mere livelihood. It is the most supply of food, fodder, and fuel. It is the basic foundation of the economic development of the country.

An agricultural product of serious measure includes rice, wheat, potato, tomato, onion, mangoes, sugar-cane, beans, cotton, etc.

If agriculture isn't there the govt and nation would fail to succeed. The agriculture means cultivation of crops, along with animal husbandry, poultry, dairy farming, fishing, and forestry.

Track 3: Farm Production in the World

The world’s land area totals 13.958 million hectares, of which 4.992 million hectares are classified as agricultural land. This accounts for about 36% of the total land area. The agricultural land is divided into 3 categories: arable land (28%), permanent crops (3%), and meadows and pastures (68%). The most common type of agricultural production is farming. Grains, such as wheat, rice, barley, and corn, make up the majority of the world's crop production. Some of the world's major crops and their production volumes are shown in the following table.

      World’s highest agriculture production countries

1. China, which is the world's biggest producer, importer and consumer of food.
2. India. In terms of total calorie content, India is the second largest food producer in the world.
3. The United States No country produces food as efficiently as the U.S. Despite having a significantly smaller workforce than China, total U.S. agricultural product is almost as high.
4. Brazil, The Brazilian economy has historically cantered on agriculture, particularly sugarcane, dating back to its time as a European colony. At least 31% of Brazil is used as cropland, largely to produce coffee, sugarcane, soybeans, and corn.

Track 4: Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable Agriculture is farming ecologically by promoting methods and practices that are economically viable, environmentally sound and protect public health. The goal of sustainable agriculture is to fulfil society’s food and textile needs within the gift while not compromising the power of future generations to fulfil their own desires. Practitioners of property agriculture ask for to integrate 3 main objectives into their work: a healthy setting, economic profit, and social and economic equity. Every person concerned within the food system growers, food processors, distributors, retailers, consumers, and waste managers can play a job in making certain a property agricultural system. Agriculture is feeding the world’s seven.3 billion folks however at associate unendurable social and environmental price. One-third of the world’s land is degraded, up to 75 per cent of crop genetic diversity has been lost and more than half of fish stocks are fully exploited. At the same time, about 800 million people are undernourished.

Benefits of Sustainable Farming

1. Environment Preservation

2. Economic Profitability

3. Most efficient use of non-renewable resources

4. Protection of Public Health

5. Social and Economic Equity

Track 5: Sustainable Farming Methods

Make use of Renewable Energy Sources: The most important practice is the use of alternate sources of energy. Use of solar, hydro-power or wind-farms is ecology friendly. Farmers can use solar panels to store solar energy and use it for electrical fencing and running of pumps and heaters. Running river water can be source of hydroelectric power and can be used to run various machines on farms. Similarly, farmers can use geothermal heat pumps to dig beneath the earth and can take advantage of earth’s heat.

Integrated pest management: Integrated pest management a combination pest control techniques for identifying and observing pests in the initial stages. One needs to also realize that not all pests are harmful and therefore it makes more sense to let them co-exist with the crop than spend money eliminating them. Targeted spraying works best when one need to remove specific pests only. This not only helps you to spray pest on the selected areas but will also protect wildlife from getting affected.

Crop Rotation: Crop rotation is a tried and tested method used since ancient farming practices proven to keep the soil healthy and nutritious. Crop rotation has a logical explanation to it – the crops are picked in a pattern so that the crops planted this season replenish the nutrients and salts from the soil that were absorbed by the previous crop cycle. For example, row crops are planted after grains in order to balance the used nutrients.

Crop Diversity: Farmers can grow varieties of the same crop yielding small but substantial differences among the plants.

Better Water Management: The first step in water management is the choice of the correct crops. One must choose the local crops as they are more adaptable to the weather conditions of the region. Crops that don't command an excessive amount of water should be chosen for dry areas. Irrigation systems ought to be planned alternatives they result in other problems like stream depletion, physical object, and soil degradation. One can also build rainwater harvesting systems to store rainwater and use them in drought prevailing conditions. Apart from that municipal wastewater can be used for irrigation after recycling.

Track 6: Conservation Agriculture (CA)

Conservation Agriculture (CA) is outlined as a sustainable agriculture production system comprising a group of farming practices custom-made to the necessities of crops and native conditions of every region, whose farming and soil management techniques protect the soil from erosion and degradation, improve its quality and biodiversity, and contribute to the preservation of the natural resources, water and air, while optimizing yields. Conservation Agriculture is a concept for resource-saving agricultural crop production that strives to achieve acceptable profits together with high and sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment.

Track 7: Climate-Smart Agriculture

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to managing landscapes—cropland, livestock, forests and fisheries--that address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change. CSA aims to simultaneously achieve three outcomes:

1. Increased productivity: Produce more food to improve food and nutrition security and boost the incomes of 75 percent of the world’s poor that live in rural areas and mainly rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.
2. Enhanced resilience: Reduce vulnerability to drought, pests, disease and other shocks; and improve capacity to adapt and grow in the face of longer-term stresses like shortened seasons and erratic weather patterns.
3. Reduced emissions: Pursue lower emissions for each calorie or kilo of food produced, avoid deforestation from agriculture and identify ways to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

Track 8: Pesticide Use in Agriculture and Impacts

Pesticides area unit normally utilized in agriculture to reduce pests to enhance crop yields and agriculture productivity. However, there are long term environmental impacts that result from the overuse of these chemicals. Pesticides are shown to be malignant neoplastic disease additionally as inflicting issues with our nervous system, endocrine system and lungs once inhaled. Pesticides infiltrate our groundwater offer polluting our water, contaminate our food, and make the inflated risk of exposure for farm staff. In addition, the use of neonicotinoids, a commonly used insecticide in agriculture, has been linked to a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder and subsequent decline in bee populations. This is regarding as bees area unit necessary for impregnation of crops and for a thriving food setting.

Track 9: Organic Farming

Organic farming refers to a specific type of agricultural production system used to produce food and fibre which prohibits farmers from using synthetic pesticides. Organic Agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, Biological cycles and soil biological activity.  All produce grains, meat, dairy, eggs and fibres must be derived organically. Organic farmers rely on developing biological diversity in the field to disrupt habitat for pest organisms, and to maintain soil fertility. By allowing farm animals access to the outdoors and feeding them 100% organic feed, a healthier farm system is created for people, animals and the environment. Certified organic refers to agricultural products that have been grown and processed according to uniform standards, and must be verified by organizations that have been accredited by the USDA.

Track 10: Food Sustainability

Sustainability is maintaining modification within the balanced environment within which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional modification area unit dead harmony and enhance each current and future potential to satisfy human wants and aspirations.

Food sustainability is defined as how food is produced and what types of foods we’re consuming can have significant impacts on our environment to the growing human population. The intrinsic factors to guarantee a sustainable food system are a fertile land, water, fertilizers, a stable climate, and energy. However, as the world population grows, the volume of food needed in the future will not depend just on these intrinsic factors, but on human choices. Challenges of our current food system that can impact health, including antibiotic resistance, farmworker exposures, industrial farming, access to fresh fruits and vegetables and the decline of the bee population due to pesticide use.

Track 11: Nutritional Challenges

Global food systems will face unprecedented challenges in the coming years. They will need to meet the nutritional needs of a growing population and feed an expanding demand for proteins. This is against a backdrop of increasing environmental challenges (water resources, climate change, and soil health) and the need to improve farming livelihoods. Collaborative efforts by a variety of stakeholders are needed to ensure that future generations have access to healthy and sustainable diets. Food will play an increasingly important role in the global discourse on health.

Track 12: Food Sustainable index

The Food Sustainability Index is a global study on nutrition, sustainable agriculture and food waste which collects data from countries across the world to highlight best practices and key areas for improvement in relation to the food paradoxes and the main Sustainable Development Goals. Food index is a study analysing the social, economic and environmental aspects of food sustainability. The FSI allows for comparison between countries and food-system indicators, highlighting best practices that food-system stakeholders—including policymakers, civil society organisations, the private sector, academia and research, and the media—can use to design roadmaps toward more sustainable food systems and ultimately the SDGs. Important drivers of sustainable food systems include education, advocacy and policies.

Track 13: Food processing

Food processing is the set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food or food into other forms for consumption. Food processing includes many forms of processing foods, from grinding grain to make raw flour to home cooking to complex industrial methods used to make convenience foods. Food processing typically takes clean, harvested crops or slaughtered and butchered animal products and uses these to produce attractive, marketable, and often long-life food products. Similar processes are used to produce animal feed.

Primary food processing is necessary to make most foods edible, and secondary food processing turns the ingredients into familiar foods, such as bread.

Tertiary food processing has been criticized for promoting over nutrition and obesity, containing too much sugar and salt, too little fiber, and otherwise being unhealthful.

Track 14: Food Technology

Food science is that the science of nature dedicated to the study of food; it's usually confused with "food technology". The Institute of Food Technologists defines food science as "the discipline within which the engineering, biological, and physical sciences area unit wont to study the character of foods, the causes of deterioration, the principles underlying food process, and therefore the improvement of foods for the overwhelming public.

Activities of food technologists include the development of new food products, design of processes to produce these foods, choice of packaging materials, shelf-life studies, and sensory evaluation of products using survey panels or potential consumers, as well as microbiological and chemical testing. Food scientists may study more fundamental phenomena that are directly linked to the production of food products and its properties.