Agriculture is a broad term that encompasses everything to do with growing crops and food products. It includes the use of machinery, the use of fertilizers, pesticides, high yielding seeds, farm animals and other methods. When one talks about the innovations in agriculture, it basically means anything to do with all these components of agriculture. The use of better machinery to increase harvest, the use of high yielding seeds to increase food crop output, the use of vaccines to keep farm animals healthy longer and therefore reduce costs all come under this heading.
The fact is that innovation is necessary in the field of agriculture to ensure that productivity of farms increase in tune with the increasing population of the world, so that lesser stomachs are left empty. With an increase in the use of better fertilizers and pesticides come the added problems of waste and pollution, which too are addressed through the use of natural innovative chemicals. One of the latest trends is to go for organic farming that makes use of natural fertilizers and pesticides without any harmful chemicals that can pollute the environment. This field seems to be getting a lot of research money simply because of the fact that through organic farming an agricultural land can be kept viable for longer.
The use of chemicals and modern techniques to increase harvest seem to have an adverse effect on the output of the land and it is organic farming that seems to increase the output rather than decrease it. Methods such as crop rotation and canal system for irrigation are old techniques that are today getting revamped to meet increasing demands for organic crops. These two systems seem to protect farm lands better than anything else. Another direction that innovation in this field has taken to is the use of genetic engineering to make crops naturally more resistant to pests and more resilient to nature.
