Agriculture, energy and material for sustainability in the education process

Abstract

It is widely understood that agricultural production is based on the exploitation of natural, primarily biological, chemical and physical resources. Thus, the soil (lithosphere) represents the physical source, i.e. the foundation for cultivation of cereals, field crops, fruit-and vine growing. Furthermore, it represents the chemical source supplying the crops with an adequate amount of both major and trace elements and other nutrients. Indirectly, it is also a source of the nutrients required in livestock production. The definition of an ecosystem and agriculture as its constituent part offers a better understanding of the importance of energy investments, consumption and production of energy in agriculture. The abiotic or non-living component part is made up of chemical and physical factors of the environment of the biotic component part (namely, climate, water, air and soil). Water presents the abiotic component part of a pond, whereas air, soil and sunlight present the abiotic factors in either a garden, a wheat-growing field or on a pasture. Producers, consumers and decomposers present the three biotic component parts of each ecosystem. In the case of energy flow through the ecosystem, the implementation of the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics showed that more than 90% of the total energy captured by the producers, disappeared from the food chain each time it was converted and moved from one to another trophic level. The greatest amounts of energy in an ecosystem or food chain were found to be stored in the primary producers and had a declining trend with each trophic level that followed.