Potential and Strategies of Adapted Land Use as a Basis for Ecologically and Social-economically Sustainable Development of the Rural Landscape

Abstract

After what is now more than 60 years of intensive agricultural use of the virgin lands, the soil is damaged in various different ways. However, the area still has a high potential for food production due to generally sufficient amounts of precipitation. The task at hand is to switch from a way of farming which consumes many resources (the Canadian colleagues refer to it as 'mining the soils') to sustainable agriculture and/or husbandry. This represents a challenge, with the consequences described in Chap. 1 of Part I and Chap. 15 of Part II, as the common way of farming is often according to the international standards of the 1970s. It is an immense task to switch to highly modern procedures using GPS and electronically controlled seeders within just a few years. However, it can also be seen as a great opportunity because people will not need to undergo the entire learning process with its many steps in between as was the case in Canada, for instance.