Common agricultural practices involve individual farm activities and national/international policies. Farming includes tillage, nutrient use, pest control, and water management. Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) set standards for sustainability and safety in food production, including water protection, erosion control, and quality assurance. GAP also addresses commercial livestock production and animal welfare.
Common agricultural practices refer both to activities at the individual farm level and to the political authorities established to set agricultural standards on a larger scale. At the individual farm level, the most common agricultural practices of modern agriculture involve tillage, appropriate nutrient use, weed and insect control, and water supply management. National and international agricultural policies, often referred to as good agricultural practices, focus on safe and sustainable commercial production of food and livestock at the macro level.
For individual farms, farming begins with tilling the land for planting, adding nutrients to plants, and using pest control methods. The reintroduction of contour farming in the United States in the 1930s, for example, led to a large increase in crop yields and a large reduction in soil erosion. Now the most common type of plowing, contour farming simply means plowing furrows that follow the contour of the land. The practice dates back to pre-Roman times, but was replaced with straight-line plowing for nearly 2,000 years after the Romans adopted it.
Advances in nutrients and pesticides have provided farmers with safer and more effective tools to boost and protect crops. Soil nutrient supplementation is a common agricultural practice, with methods ranging from chemical nutrients to organic supplements. The same is true for pest control, where chemical treatments, organic compounds, and special tillage methods may be used to reduce crop loss to weeds or insects.
Water management overlaps both with individual agricultural activities and with national or international policies. Most nations and international groups, such as the United Nations, have established Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). These practices set standards for sustainability and safety in food production by addressing soil, water, animal health and public health issues.
Good agricultural practices related to water include protection from pollutants that clog groundwater sources, safe transfer of water from source to soil, efficient irrigation or irrigation, and water conservation. As with individual soil agricultural practices, the GAP standards focus on erosion control and land conservation. The standards also address the appropriate use of fertilizers and pesticides.
National and international policies also aim at the safe transfer of food from farm to consumer. To achieve this, most Good Agricultural Practices have quality control and quality assurance standards. These were seen as necessary with the growing globalization of agriculture. GAP policies also consider commercial livestock production as an agricultural practice and have set standards for consumer safety and animal welfare.
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