Sustainability in Agriculture

11 Key excerpts on "Sustainability in Agriculture"

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  Agricultural Sustainability

  • Elisa Gomez Gonzalez(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  1.2. DEFINITIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY There are several definitions of sustainability directed towards the agriculture sector. The OECD (1995) defines sustainability as “a development strategy that manages all assets, natural resources, and human resources as well as financial assets, for increasing long-term wealth and well-being” According to the OECD, the value of natural resources should not be measured only taking into account their capacity to produce tangible goods, but also with the various non-marketed environmental benefits they provide. Trzyna & Osborn (1995) define sustainability with reference to development as “the complex of activities that can be expected to improve the human condition in such a manner that the improvement can be maintained” (Figure 1.1). Figure 1.1: Illustrating key elements of agricultural sustainability ( Source: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/sustainable-agricul -ture-23562787). Sustainability is also thought of as the idea of maintaining some overall equilibrium between resource use and availability (Pierce, 1993). The American Society of Agronomy defines a sustainable system as “one that over the long-term, enhances environmental quality and the resource base on An Overview on Agricultural Sustainability 3 which agriculture depends; provides for basic human food and fiber needs; is economically viable and enhances the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole” (American Society of Agronomy, 1989). There is no conflict in the opinions expressed in these definitions. A synthesis of the definitions and an understanding of the concept indicate that a sustainable system is one that seeks to maximize present benefits while conserving resources (particularly natural resources) for future generations to use. 1.3. AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY Agriculture is indispensable in both urban and rural development. It is an important component for development and sustainability.

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  Agriculture's Ethical Horizon

  • Robert L Zimdahl(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  a. Sustainability of production. Long-term food sufficiency, either domestic or worldwide. The practice of agriculture is the way the world is fed and economic cost-benefit analysis of agricultural science and technology is how one determines the best way to practice agriculture to sustain it and thus prevent massive starvation.

  b. Sustainability as stewardship. A primary concern for ecological balance and environmental quality. The proper quest is to create an agricultural system that preserves and conserves renewable resources while not polluting the environment or disrupting ecological balance on which life depends. Achieving sustainability is not a production question. It is a matter of knowing the ecological consequences of any production system and then minimizing the negative consequences. In Westra’s (1998 , p. 175 ) words, in regard to the earth’s natural systems, sustainability means maintaining “optimum, undiminished capacity for their time and location for sustained evolutionary development.”

  c. Sustainability as community. Sustainability is achieved by creating a set of agricultural practices, which encourage certain virtues that undergird the vitality of local communities. It is these practices which are to be preserved or reinstated. This view is similar to the second one, but emphasizes maintaining the “social organization and culture of rural life.”

  HIGHLIGHT 7.1

  “The essence of food and fiber production is that on one hand, the key production resources (seeds, tubers, soil, manures, and rain water) are renewable, thus potentially enabling agriculture to be a highly sustainable activity. On the other hand, agriculture has some actual or potential characteristics of an extractive industry, similar to mining, and accordingly has the potential to be highly unsustainable. In addition, food and fiber production may involve long-term non-environmental costs (e.g., impacts on workers, communities, regions, and consumers) to a greater or lesser degree” (Buttell, 2003

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  Handbook of Rural Studies

  • Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden, Patrick Mooney, Paul Cloke, Terry Marsden, Patrick Mooney(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  INTRODUCTION For more than two decades scholars, policy-makers and citizens groups have employed and debated the notion of agricultural sustainability. There is general agreement that sustainability can be defined, in part, as environmental or eco-logical soundness of the production system or agro-food commodity chain. There is also gen-eral agreement that while ecological soundness is the core dimension of sustainability, economic viability and ‘justice’ or ‘equity’ are also signifi-cant dimensions (Allen, 1993). Sustainability is employed variously as a critique and sometimes as a defence of prevailing agricultural practices and institutions. On one hand, some observers insist that modern agricul-ture tends to fall far short of a satisfactory level of sustainability; not only is agriculture seen as compromising environmental quality, but in addi-tion agriculture is seen to be socio-economically unsustainable (in that net income and returns to equity capital continue to decline) and unjust (in that ‘family-type’ production is being marginal-ized while industrial-scale production is in ascendance, and in that agriculture is increas-ingly based on poorly paid immigrant or minor-ity labourers and involves a lack of attention to the ‘rights’ of animals). For these groups, agri-culture’s lack of sustainability is employed as a critique of the agro-food system. Other groups, however, particularly mainstream farm organiza-tions, commodity groups, agricultural researchers and agricultural ministry officials, consider most farming operations to be sustainable in the sense that they are largely based on renewable natural resources and provide food and fibre efficiently and cheaply. These groups may have concerns about the economic sustainability of agriculture, but these concerns are not specific to the viability of household production units. These groups seldom see agriculture as being unsustainable from the vantage point of social justice.

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  Geographies of Agriculture

  Globalisation, Restructuring and Sustainability

  • Guy Robinson(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  et al., 1992). Farmers tended to focus on economic factors rather than environmental ones and did not recognise any need for reducing purchased inputs or energy use. This contrasted with academic views that stressed the core ecological aspects of sustainable agriculture, for example ‘the ability of the agro-ecosystem to maintain productivity when subject to a stress or shock’ (Conway, 1997, p. 177). The academic views also varied between academic disciplines, reflecting the need to formulate future policy on sustainability that encompasses a broad interpretation of the term.

  Cobb et al. (1999) identify three specific problems in defining sustainable agriculture:

  •   The dificulty in determining what sustainable soil characteristics are, e.g. the elusive notions of soil resilience and soil health. •   The debate over the role of biodiversity. •   Failure of academic research to develop appropriate inter-disciplinary research on this topic.

  Despite these difficulties, it is agreed that sustainable agriculture is primarily an approach to agri-culture that balances agronomic, environmental, economic and social optima, as implied in the definition provided by Francis and Younghusband (1990):

  Sustainable agriculture is a philosophy based on human goals and on understanding the long-term impact of our activities on the environment and on other species. Use of this philosophy guides our application of prior experience and the latest scientific advances to create integrated, resource-conserving, equitable farming systems. These systems reduce environmental degradation, maintain agricultural productivity, promote economic viability in both the short- and long-term, and maintain stable rural communities and quality of life.

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  The Future of Philippine Agriculture under a Changing Climate

  Policies, Investments and Scenarios

  • Mark W. Rosegrant, Mercedita A. Sombilla(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Applied to the context of agricultural growth, sustainability implies achieving increased productivity while preserving the integrity of the natural environment. It is tied to the notion that human agricultural activity, if unchecked, has a deleterious impact on the environment, thereby compromising the rights and benefits of future generations. The “Driving Force–State–Response” framework of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides one answer to the question of how agriculture actually affects the environment (Figure 5.1). Under this framework, driving forces include human and economic activities that cause changes in farm and management practices, as well as changes in the environment itself, notably meteorological events. Together, such drivers constitute agriculture’s impact on the ecosystem and the health and welfare of farmers through its effect on the main biological The Sustainability of Agricultural Growth 213 FIGURE 5.1 The “Driving Force–State–Response” Framework Source : OECD. “Environmental Indicators for Agriculture: Issues and Design” (The York Workshop. Paris, 1999 b ). 214 Asa Jose U. Sajise, Dieldre S. Harder, and Paul Joseph B. Ramirez inputs to agriculture (soil, water, and air) and the synergistic composition and function of ecosystems. In turn, the State elicits responses from the farmers, policymakers, consumers, and others resulting in behavioral changes, policy reforms, shifts in demand, and so on. Another way to look at the link between agriculture and the environment, which is also implicit in the OECD framework, is the notion of “jointness” between agricultural production and its environmental impacts. In that sense, alongside the production of commodities, agriculture also causes known and unknown ecological and environmental processes that can be both positive and negative (Sajise and Sajise 2011).

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  Agriculture and the Environment

  Papers presented at the International Conference, 10-13 November 1991

  • C.A. Edwards, M.K. Wali, D.J. Horn, F. Miller(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier Science

    (Publisher)

  (9) Focus of universities on catalyzing the learning process rather than on conventional teaching approaches; move toward development of critical thinking and communication skills, problem solving processes, and informa-tion access and evaluation. (10) Evaluating new thinking on topics such as Gaia, deep ecology, and ecofeminism (Lovelock, 1979) and seeking potential applications in sustain-able agroecosystems. These are among the ideas that will influence the directions taken in re-search and education in the future. Systems will be highly participatory, and people will be empowered to direct their own research and interpret results. The location specificity of information can be determined by careful obser-vation or scouting of individual fields and farms. The efficient sharing of in-formation will provide the basis for a biologically sustainable and economi-cally viable owner/operator farming sector. Most important, people in agriculture will have the perspectives and tools needed to determine their future in this industry. To be able to envision the future, decide on a more desirable structure and make decisions today to make that future a reality tomorrow is a positive and empowering alternative. This is one possible di-rection for a sustainable agriculture in the US, a direction that is highly de-pendent on a positive vision and a willingness to change and pursue oppor-tunities as they arise. Our farming and ranching populations have shown the capacity to grow and adapt, and they will be challenged to accelerate positive change in the future. References Altieri, M.A., 1987. Agroecology: the Scientific Basis of Alternative Agriculture. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 227 pp. Carroll, C.R., Vandermeer, J.H. and Rosset, P.M. (Editors), 1990. Agroecology. McGraw Hill, New York, 641 pp. 134 C.A. Francis, J.P. Madden /Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 46 (1993) 123-134 Edwards, CA., Lal, R., Madden, P., Miller, R.H.

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  Together at the Table

  Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System

  • Patricia Allen(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  “Neither a lack of technology nor a lack of understanding of ecological processes are standing in the way of sustainable agricultural systems today”; the problem is that most farmers cannot use this knowledge and still survive in the Discourses and Practices of Sustainability 103 3. A summary of questions raised through a multidisciplinary conference, “Sustainable Agriculture: Balancing Social, Environmental, and Economic Concerns,” is reported in Allen and Van Dusen 1990. current political and economic structure (Foster and Magdoff 1998: 45). Answering basic questions about agricultural sustainability “requires going beyond narrow—and, frankly sterile—debates on the technologies that might make for a more ‘sustainable agriculture’ and confronting instead the political and economic forces that have driven farmers into agriculture’s present disastrous cul-de-sac” (Clunies-Ross and Hildyard 1992: 7). Attention to how agricultural products are produced should be supple- mented, as Altieri (1988) proposes, by attention to what agricultural prod- ucts are produced and for whom. Related to the issue of whole systems is the one of causation. Often focused primarily at the level of symptoms rather than causes, little effort has gone into answering basic why questions about problems cited by alter- native agrifood movements. For example, the advocates of sustainable agri- culture promote reduction of pesticide use because pesticides cause groundwater contamination and remain as residues on food. What is less often considered is how and why pesticide use has become so prevalent in agriculture and what the forces are behind this. Alternative agrifood efforts address the more immediate causes of problems. They rarely address their more opaque, structural causes, that is, causes that reflect deeper, systemic operating principles of the food and agriculture system. This limitation tends to naturalize what is social and imposes restrictions on what reme- dies are possible.

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  Sustainable Agriculture and Food Supply

  Scientific, Economic, and Policy Enhancements

  • Kimberly Etingoff(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Apple Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  That is, the main rationale for protecting the natural environment is to safeguard equal opportunities for welfare among humans living in different spatial and temporal locations. The needs and interests of non-human animals are referred to in some of the orga-nizations’ policies; however, they are not at the heart of the organizations’ sus-tainability policies. 12.4.3 SUSTAINABILITY DIMENSIONS AND PRIORITIZATIONS All of the interviewed representatives acknowledge that the concept of agricul-tural sustainability has several dimensions that need to be integrated in the orga-nizations’ sustainability work. This is in line with academic discussions on the concept of agricultural sustainability that emphasize that agricultural produc-tion should not only be economically profitable and environmentally benign, but should also meet human needs for food and contribute to quality of life [14,17]. From the organizations’ sustainability policy documents, it is clear that most of the goals that have been included in the policies concern either environ-mental or social aspects of sustainable development. However, as explained by the representative of Lantmännen, this is not surprising, since economic goals are a ‘natural’ part of the organizations’ reason for being and, therefore, do not have to be included in their sustainability policies. Although the informants agree that the concept of agricultural sustainability consists of different aspects (ecological, economic and social) that are all cen-tral to the idea of creating sustainable agricultural production systems, they give The Role of Biotechnology in Sustainable Agriculture 325 slightly different answers when asked to exemplify what falls under the (three) sustainability dimensions. For example, when asked about the social dimension of agricultural sustainability, all informants agree that work environment issues, such as safety, pay and human rights issues, are central.

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  The Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Technologies

  A Case Study in the State of Espírito Santo, Brazil

  • Hildo Meirelles de Souza Filho(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  They see the input-dependent industrial model of agriculture as being fundamentally incompatible with maintaining a healthy ecological and social environment. Advocates of organic farming believe that sustainability will require the total elimination of manufactured chemical inputs. Others propose still different models of farming as a means of achieving long run agricultural sustainability. OECD (1994) has stressed the difficulty of imposing a rigid definition of sustainable agriculture in the face of the enormous variety of social, economic and environmental contexts that characterise countries and even regions in the same country. However, it is possible to obtain a consensus that ... sustainable forms of agriculture are characterized by the adoption of practices and technologies that: - use integrated management techniques which maintain ecological integrity both on and off the farm; - are necessarily site-specific and flexible; - preserve biodiversity, landscape amenity and other public goods not valued by existing markets; - are profitable to producers in the long-term; and - are economically efficient from a societal perspective (OECD, 1994, p.8). There are several terms related to sustainable agricultural technologies. While most of these terms refer to specific farming practices or systems, others, such as ‘alternative agriculture’ and ‘LEISA’ (low-extemal-input and sustainable agriculture), have a broader meaning. Table 4.1 presents definitions of some farming system which are quoted in the literature as sustainable. The term ‘alternative agriculture’ is one of great generality. Its most comprehensive definition is given by the National Research Council (1989, p.3): 59 Table 4.1 Definitions of some farming systems with great potential for sustainability Biodynamicfarming A holistic system of agriculture devised by Rudolph Steiner that seeks to connect nature with cosmic creative forces.

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  Relevant Perspectives in Global Environmental Change

  • Julius Ibukun Agboola(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  Investing in agricultural research and development and training of extension workers will facilitate sustainable agriculture. Active participation and engagement of farmers that meet the public interest particularly in the development of new technology should be clearly spelt out in government policy. Improved access to higher-value markets, agricultural inputs and good infrastructures such as roads, transport, storage facilities and effective communication system would motivate many more farmers to engage in sustainable agriculture practices. Land reform policy and measures should be provided to aid and strengthen management of agricultural resources and protect the ecological environment. In order to tackle climate change problems, government policy should focus on best practices identified for enhanced agricultural productivity, increased resilience and low carbon agriculture, and environmental sustainability. Hardly any African country has integrated sustainable agriculture practise into its agricultural policies, and adopting sustainable agriculture and integrating into national policies will go a long way towards solving food security problems, combating global warming and improving agricultural productivity in general. Relevant Perspectives in Global Environmental Change 32 6. References Aerni, P., (2009) What is sustainable agriculture? Emperical evidence of diverging views in Switzerland and New Zealand. Ecological Economics 68, 1872-1882. Allen, J., Thompson, G., (1997) Think global , then think again- Economic globalisation in context. Area 29:213-27. Baylies, C., (1979) The emergence of indigenous capitalist agriculture: the case of Southern Province, Zambia in Rural-Africana, 4-5, Spring-Fall, pp 65-81. Benjaminsen, T., Sjaastad, E., (2002) Race for the prize; land transaction and rent appropriation in the Malian Cotton Zone. European Journal of Development Research 14 (2), 129-152.

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  Agroecosystem Sustainability

  Developing Practical Strategies

  • Stephen R. Gliessman(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  For example, large scale conver-sion of the natural landscape into crop production systems based on monoculture is likely to induce a negative effect on biodiversity and/or stability of water cycles on a large scale. These effects cannot be easily “guessed” when evaluating the influence of monoculture on a single crop field. When dealing with the issue of sustainability, a correct assessment of agricultural performance should be based on an integrated analysis of trade-offs rather than on the use of reductionistic analyses searching for optimal solutions (Optimal for whom? Optimal for how long? Optimal on which scale?). An analysis of agricultural performance should be based on an integrated set of indicators that are able to OPERATIONALIZING THE CONCEPT OF Sustainability in Agriculture 179 (1) reflect various perspectives and (2) read the changes occurring on different hierarchical levels in parallel on space-time scales. This is the only way to usefully characterize the effects that a proposed technological or policy change can be expected to induce in the various actors involved and in relation to processes occur-ring on different scales. The theoretical discussion in this chapter will be complemented by practical examples taken from a case study. We will use the findings of a four year project aimed at characterizing the effects on sustainability of the process of intensification of production in rural areas of China. The complete results of this study are presented in four papers (Giampietro et al. 1999; Li Ji et al., 1999; Giampietro and Pastore, 1999; Pastore et al., 1999) to which we refer the reader for more detailed explanations of data and methods. 11.2 THEORETICAL BASIS OF THE INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT APPROACH 11.2.1 Nested Hierarchical Systems and Nonequivalent Descriptive Domains Agricultural systems are complex systems made up of many different components that operate in parallel on different space-time scales.

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