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JAINA CONVENTION 2017
Jainism and Agriculture
Pranav Mehta
Many people believe in religion and many believe in science. But quite a few believe that religion and science don't mix. Jainism is arguably the most science-inclined religion of ancient times. It incorporates many principles related to physics, medical, and health science that can improve people's lives. It is a religion which recognized the importance of diet and lifestyle in the well being of humans and thus put emphasis on both concepts. One of the most striking but least discussed feature of Jainism is that it also encourages preservation of natural resources and environmental sustainability. We will look at some of these principles here.
Let's take a look at the present state of mankind:
There are over 7 billion people on Earth. The single most powerful interaction we have with our environment is the food that we eat. Arguably, food is the most important resource we need to produce sustainably to feed all the people in the world for generations to come. It is estimated that over 800 million people on Earth go to bed hungry every night, which means we already have MASSIVE food shortages.
So why do we have food shortages, and what are we doing about it?
We believe that agriculture was invented almost 10,000 years ago but we have seen most of its technological innovations in the last 200 years of industrialization.
First, we mechanized the process of farming by introducing mechanical equipment and machinery, such as tractors and harvesters.
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In the last 50 years, many industrialized countries have seen consolidation of small farms into giant monoculture systems of crop production.
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