**1. Introduction**

Agriculture, which supplies all of the world's food and occupies 40% of the available land, is both the largest industry in the world and a major land use [1]. The economic growth of the world is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector. Developing countries continue to face the most pressing difficulties due to the increasing population and related food security. In the twentieth century, enhancing food production was only possible by increasing agricultural output with outside inputs like mineral fertilizers and pesticides [2–4]. Modern agricultural techniques built on the green revolution have led to a significant increase in grain productivity at the expense of depleting natural resources. Soil fertility and environmental resilience suffered significantly because of agriculture's externalization. Thus, it calls for different strategies that should train farmers to use their traditional knowledge to produce

more grains with fewer outside inputs. The method is referred to as sustainable agriculture, which is currently essential.

The integrated usage of a variety of soil, nutrients, and pest management techniques including manure, crop residue, mixed cropping, and crop rotations has been encouraged in sustainable agriculture systems [5–8]. By minimizing soil degradation, these approaches increased soil quality, nutrient pools, climatic resilience, and ecosystem restoration, increasing the socioeconomic status of farmers. However, switching to exclusively organic management of agroecosystems is difficult due to the relatively lower supply of organic fertilizers. In order to improve soil quality and nutrient pools, integrated nutrient management (INM), which combines increased organic inputs into the soil with a balanced application of inorganic fertilizers, is encouraged [1, 9]. Briefly said the fundamental strategy of sustainable agriculture is that we must produce more while using fewer natural resources. Many new alternative practices, such as conservation agriculture and organic farming for soil management, watersaving agronomic practices, INM, biofertilizers, and precision agriculture, have been proposed to achieve the fundamental goals of sustainable agriculture.

There is no debate that conventional agriculture (CA) has high productivity, but it simultaneously generates environmental and social impacts of global concern [5, 10]. CA has an impact on the environment through greenhouse gas emissions, water quality decline, soil erosion, livelihoods, and food security [5, 6]. Currently, CA practices are contributing to the degradation of important ecological processes that support life on Earth. These practices are responsible for climate change, the degradation of the biosphere, the destruction of the land system, and the eutrophication of the oceans as a result of mineral fertilizers application [8, 11]. This chapter explores the viability of using sustainable agriculture practices in order to achieve global food and nutritional security sustainably [7, 12, 13]. Furthermore, it addresses the obstacles and possibilities for improving the practice in developed and developing countries. Disseminating sustainable agriculture methods to the field level through academic curricula, seminars, symposiums, and research is essential to achieving a brighter future.

## **2. Major components of sustainable agriculture**

Agriculture could become sustainable with careful management of its components. The major components of sustainable agriculture are building healthy soil and preventing erosion, managing water wisely, increasing carbon sequestration, increasing resilience to extreme weather, and promoting biodiversity (**Figure 1**). In this chapter, the components related to soil ecosystem have received the most attention because it substantially impacts all other components and sustainable agriculture. Application of organic fertilizers like compost, green manure, vermicomposting, and cover crops supported by a careful rotation of crops are used in sustainable agriculture to maintain and enhance soil fertility. Maintaining healthy soil, increasing carbon sequestration, and resilience to extreme weather are interconnected and could be attained through these methods [8, 14]. Besides, locally accessible organic wastes could be transformed into plant nutrients, reducing the negative impact of artificial fertilizers on sustainable soil management. Developing guidelines to reuse different wastes as plant nutrients is crucial to reducing the use of synthetic fertilizer. The primary issues with artificial fertilizer use in industrialized countries are excessive application. However, low-rate applications are a problem in developing countries. Land resources and agricultural production are strongly impacted in both excessive

*Improving the Sustainability of Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112857*

**Figure 1.**

*Components of sustainable agriculture.*

and low application scenarios. Supplementing with organic fertilizer made from waste materials through composting is essential to balancing the constraint caused by excessive and low application [9, 15]. Not only does building healthy soil boost productivity, but it also makes the soil more drought-resilient and increases carbon sequestration. As a result, it might be easier to adapt to a changing climate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions [16–18]. Increasing soil organic matter (SOM) content in the soils can increase water retention more at field capacity by improving bulk density and porosity and thus increase the plant available water capacity (PAWC) [19–21]. The availability of SOM material may affect how much PAWC increases. Thus, building up the SOM content of soils can make them as well as agroecosystems climateresilient. Increasing soil resilience to drought could ensure optimum crop yield in dry seasons [20]; consequently, it improves sustained yield intensification.
