October 19 2018
Forum Essay 2 Rough Draft
As the Earth’s population keeps growing, the food supply demand will increase as well, creating emphasis on agricultural sustainability. While agricultural sustainability is a worldwide problem as agricultural cities and towns are found almost everywhere in the world, for the purposes of this paper, it would be easiest to centralize the argument around a set location so better examine the problems and solutions that can arise. One of the largest agricultural countries in the world is Kosovo, a small territory in Southeast Europe. Though Europe is not typically associated with third-world countries, Kosovo is in fact a very rural area and almost two thirds of the population resides in the rural area. Furthermore, most of the population that resides in the rural areas of Kosovo all have some type of agricultural production, making more than half the population contribute to the agriculture. For this reason, agriculture is a large component on sustainability in Kosovo.
Because Agriculture is such a broad term, the key components of agriculture can be simply summarized to be soil, water and machinery. While all these hold significant contribution to agriculture, this paper will focus specifically on water use efficiency in an effort to maximize agriculture, as the largest agricultural obstacle poor farmers face are in times of the dry season. Because of shortages of soil moisture during the dry season, the cultivation of crops are restricted to certain months. Most agricultural towns have a sort of irrigation systems such as simply the use of water tanks that helps sustain them through the dry seasons. But in poor farming towns farmers do not have accessibility or money to provide themselves with irrigation techniques such as a water tank so they suffer during dry season and endure a big loss. This is a currently ongoing problem that not many people know about many. Many farmers go bankrupt during the dry season and lose their house and all their property.
While the problem of Plastic Waste in not the focus of this paper, it is worthwhile to be briefly mentioned, as the solution and social innovation proposed in response to the problem of water use efficiency also incorporates a solution to plastic pollution in third world countries. The amount of waste a country produces is largely dependent on the waste management system quality of that country. A waste management system is difficult to maintain in a developing country and creates a variety of problems such as irregular collection services, burning without pollution control, and the breeding of parasites. This build up of plastic waste in developing countries raises major concern for public health safety and environmental reasons. Also, poor visual appearance, from the accumulation of waste, will cause declines in tourism and foreign investment, negatively impacting the country’s economy
The use of recycled plastic waste has actually been on the rise due to their wide range of applications and low cost. Plastic is actually one of the most versatile materials
Use of additives
The Sustainable development goals addressed by the agricultural and waste issues are Clean Water and Sanitation, Responsible Consumption and Production, and Life Below Water. The Clean Water and Sanitation goal aims to increase water use efficiency and ensure the supply of freshwater to areas with water scarcity. By reducing water scarcity and the amount of people suffering from water scarcity, we can take slow steps towards sustainable cities and communities. The Responsible Consumption and Production goal can be achieved as by implementing a system for water use efficiency, we are making efficient use of natural resources. The responsible consumption and production goal also aims to reduce waste through “prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse”. By creating a system that also implements the recycling of plastic, we are working even more towards this goal. Lastly for the goal of Life Below Water, by reducing plastic waste, we reduce the amount of plastic that goes into the ocean and can conserve the ecosystem underwater.
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To address the problem of water use efficiency in poor agricultural towns in Kosovo, a proper, yet cost effective irrigation system must be implemented. In short, If we can implement a program that utilizes recycling plastic waste to create a cheap, cost efficient water tank that can be used in poor farming villages, then we can simultaneously work towards a greater net agricultural profit so that farmers are more efficient and suffer less losses and also work towards reducing plastic waste in the same area, creating a healthier cleaner environment. The idea of providing a simple water tank to poor agricultural villages is not unheard of, but to simultaneously reduce plastic waste and create a social business from a water tank system is a new idea.
These kinds of projects like described above have had tremendous success in their beginning stages with the full funding from government or private sectors. Although, after a period of time, many of these projects could not continue as they could not sustain themselves or expand further when the influx of spending in the project was discontinued.
This is where the idea of the making of a social business comes in. A social business is defined as a cause-driven business that, where over time, the net profit accumulated from the business is not less than zero, really meaning that the investments made by a social business is repaid over time.
For this particular project, the funding sector and the community would have to come to a consensus that for the funding and provision of the water tank, the town must agree to a mandatory educational training program for community members to learn about the hazards associated with the accumulation of waste, potential health dangers from living in an area littered with waste and the benefits of recycling. Alongside the training program, the town will be supplied with a simple recycling system, just such as the provision of color-coded recycling bins. The funding sector will provide for the pick-up and transportation of the recycling waste at a regularly scheduled time (per month, per week etc) and for the physical creation of the tank from the recycled plastic material. The plastic waste would have to be converted to polyethylene, which is the most common form of plastic, and would either be welded or roto-molded into a tank. The people of the village should be involved in the production of their water tank as a commonly made mistake by governments and private sectors are not consulting with the people when planning water distribution.
The investments made by the funding sector in the educational program, the transportation of material and the construction of the tank must be paid back from the town once the net agricultural profit increases. This can be done in some form of taxation every month, as once the net agricultural profits have increased, farmers can afford to pay a tax and still maintain a higher profit.