Agriculture & UA Sustainability Week

The University of Arizona's Campus Sustainability enlightens students, faculty, and the community with many questionable resources like energy, water, air quality, and food, that we are starting to hear more and more about in life and in the desert.

Next week, Campus Sustainability will be holding Sustainability Week from Wednesday,October 24 to Wednesday, October 31. After checking out the Campus Sustainability Web site, I came across a Web site about sustainable agriculture in Arizona.

The UA Cooperative Extension (an outreach program from the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) and the National Resources Conservation Service work with farmers in Arizona to, according to UA Cooperative Extension:
-improve profits
-protect the environment
-enhance the quality of the lives of farmers and ranchers

Sustainable agriculture is a system that can sustain itself without destroying the land, environment and people, according to Cooperative Extension. Cooperative Extension helps farmers reduce the amount of non organic input. The general goal of the UA Cooperative Extension is to improve the lives of the communities by offering informal education to all who are interested, according to Cooperative Extension. Lately, sustainable agriculture has been a concern due to foods that have preservatives, additives, chemical fertilizers, pesticides (which have been detected in groundwater in the Midwest), according to Cooperative Extension.

In my opinion, sustainability is important to incorporate into our lifestyle not only because of the reasons listed above, but because of the rise of produce imports from other U.S. states and countries. I had never felt strongly about this until I went to Italy. All of the produce I ate was produce that was in season. I was not eating watermelon during the winter, like you can in the United States. Plus, the produce there had more flavor and it was not perfect. I don't know how sustainable the Italians are when it comes to agriculture, but from what I saw in markets and grocery stores, most of the produce was from a town in Italy.

I think that a sustainable community prove more efficient in the long run. To be able to survive off of the desert would be a large-scale challenge but I think it is something that needs to be supported more. I think that Sustainability week, the UA College of Agriculture, organizations like Tucson Community Supported Agriculture, and farmers markets around town help spread the word of living a healthier life, sustainably.

Click here to view this really awesome Web site about Controlled Environment Agriculture. You can also see tomatoes growing LIVE!


Next week, check out my blog about where to go in Tucson to shop for sustainable produce.