Look around you, what comes to your mind? Think about the weather, the trees, the rainfall pattern, pest infestation, the soil structure, the health of smallholder farmers, and the flood. What changes have we noticed over time? What are the impacts of these things on our food supply chain? These and many more issues are the major concerns for the growth and development of agriculture, especially in developing countries. How can we change our narrative and pose for a better and hopeful future when our current practices are not yet sustainable? How do we intend to sustain our growth or development in the agricultural sector?

This is one of the reasons sustainable practices are recommended for farmers; both crop and livestock producers. Sustainable practices are activities that enhance economic prosperity, environmental friendliness, and social acceptability. Practices that do not pose any harm (or negligible harm) to the environment where food is grown or livestock raised; that cannot cause pollution to the soil, air, or water bodies in any way, and at the same time increase productivity and even the welfare of the people using it and consuming from its products. Sustainable practices such as planting of native trees, adoption of rational (the use of less chemical materials and alternative use of eco-friendly materials instead) or organic farming, contour plowing, and harrowing, simple mechanized tools to enhance productivity amongst others are highly recommended. This can only be achieved when farmers are intentionally groomed to see sustainable practices as a must to achieve rather than a buzzword.

This is because we cannot run away from our current realities; climate change is changing how farming is done and we need to up our game to ensure that food is produced (in the right quantity and with the appropriate nutritive value), without causing more harm for the present and future generation. So, achieving food security starts from understanding sustainable practices through appropriate knowledge acquisition, localizing them to meet the needs of our current realities, and upscaling them to help us increase productivity and output to meet our increasing population. Therefore, we need more investment in research and development (R&D) to generate more tested knowledge, thus more research work needs to be done to identify new sustainable practices that align with our production systems and our market systems. Also, we need new frontiers of private agricultural extension officers to disseminate this information to the farmers. Not through a one-off training but a coaching process, where farmers are hand-held through step-by-step activities to imbibe the new knowledge.

There is a new ground to break in achieving a sustainable food system and at the same time, there is a need for sustainable knowledge to power it for the good of our present and future generations. The knowledge power in sustainable practices must be efficient enough to give the right results that would incentivize the farmers to continue its usage.