ABSTRACT
Agriculture is the largest industry on the planet, employing one in three humans. The agricultural industry is faced with the daunting challenge of feeding ever more people while simultaneously reducing its detrimental impacts on land, water, and air quality. Farming is further tasked with the need to anticipate and adapt to ongoing climate change, water shortages, pesticide resistance, and other growing problems. Achieving agricultural sustainability requires nothing short of a paradigm shift in how people farm. The design framework of green chemistry, a set of principles that guide the creation of inherently benign chemical products and processes that promote human and ecosystem health, can help to achieve this sustainability. This chapter critically examines emerging trends and challenges in green chemistry-compatible advances in agriculture, such as the use of semiochemicals and biologically derived pesticides in place of traditional pesticides, the genetic modification of crops, the application of chemical and biological enhancers for nutrient uptake, and nanotechnology in agriculture.
