Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
output per input, the stewardship belief adds the
relevance of a continuous temporal component
and views sustainable agriculture as optimal
management of the resource base (Berkes and
Folke, 1998). According to the stewardship
school, agricultural production has an environ-
mental cost, and neither the resource base nor the
environment can be (must be) depleted (or even
damaged) to achieve food security and profitability
for agriculture. Management must strive to opti-
mize yield (output) and efficiency of resource use
through an infinite period, while keeping the envi-
ronment intact, or even enhancing it.
The third school of thinking incorporates
communities and societies (the public, policy mak-
ers, stakeholders and consumers) with the requi-
site expectations of what sustainable agriculture
and food production must be. In this belief, agri-
culture absolutely is not the primary entity unto
itself, but rather embedded in a larger system with
other (sub-) systems, all relying on the same lim-
ited resource base (second school). The third
school is the most integrated with interdependent
components; sustainable agriculture is viewed as
wholly interactive with society and vice versa -
members of society as stakeholders have varying
degrees of active, more passive, or reflexive (e.g.
purchasing decisions) participation, expectations
and perceptions about sustainable agriculture
and agriculture production (Fig. 18.1). At mini-
mum, society fulfils the role of providing infra-
structure (e.g. transportation and communication
networks, government support and financial
institutions, and associated industrial service-
providers, and consumers of agriculture products)
and governmental assurances (e.g. policy, enforce-
ment of laws and regulations, monetary, banking
and insurance systems). In reciprocation, farmers
provide not only food security for people in return
for income, but also support local communities in
participant and leadership roles, and with jobs
and public services. Sustainable (animal) agricul-
ture in the context of the larger system (highest
level of hierarchy or integration) has a requisite
position in sustainable development of rural and
rural-urban communities, and societies.
necessary amounts of food while minimizing deg-
radation of natural and human environments. The
emergence of the second school (stewardship) from
the first (food security) in Douglass's (1984) discus-
sion illustrates the general approach of systems
theory - the merging of some number of lower level
(sub-) systems leading to aggregation into a broader
(larger) holistic system. Food production (first
school) is strictly in the (sub-) system, surrounded
or encompassed by the natural physical environ-
ment that provides energy, air, water, fertile soil,
nutrients and biodiversity (Fig. 18.1). However,
food production actively interacts with these
resources in the environment and alters the inven-
tory, supply, availability and quality of the resource
base; for example, under- or over-application of
animal manure may affect soil health, surface and
ground-water quality, and biodiversity. Therefore,
to develop and practise holistic systems thinking
the farm (sub-) system (in the first school) must
absolutely include the resource base (in the second
school) as a (sub-) system of the larger aggregate
system of society (the third school) all surrounded
by the environment (Fig. 18.1). This ensures that it
is well understood that achieving food security
through food production does in fact alter the
resource base and the natural environment.
Conversely, narrowing the thinking about food pro-
duction to just production efficiency (output/input)
within the surrounding environment that provides
the resources neglects the complexity of the dynam-
ics and interactions between food production and the
resource base. This highlights the necessity of assess-
ing food production in animal agriculture, from a
holistic perspective, more than simply just from the
perspective of animal or farm (sub-) system produc-
tivity and efficiency. Lowrance
et al
. (1986) working
from Douglass (1984) wrote of these as a more
hierarchical construct for sustainable agriculture:
sustainability as food sufficiency (lowest level of
aggregation); sustainability as stewardship; and sus-
tainability as community to accommodate compet-
ing definitions and embrace holistic thinking.
Fundamentals of nutrient and
energy cycles
Embrace and adopt systems theory
In the broad context, production and utilization
of agricultural products (food, feed and fibre)
from plants and animals is an extension and the
continuation of the managed flow of nutrients
Under the assumption that there is an ethical obli-
gation to assure sufficient food for human beings
now and in the future, agriculture must produce
