Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
or depreciated, its productive capacity and ability to support food production through a
managed ecosystem (agriculture) will be much reduced.
The fourth element, equity, refers to the necessity to manage the endowment of ecological
capital to meet the needs of the current generation without damaging its capacity to provide
for future generations. In the context of our definition, the principle of equity also implies
observing rules of fairness in the production, distribution and marketing of food and in
exploiting other goods and services provided by our endowment of ecological capital.
Population, the fifth element, refers to the current generation who consumes the goods and
services produced from ecological capital, as well as future generations who will be consuming
future products and services from the ecological capital. The attainment of a sustainable
agricultural production system depends on the size of the population whose needs are to be
met, the consumption level of the population, and the type of technology used in the produc‐
tion process. The final element, practice, deals with not only the technology employed in the
production process but also the political, economic and social factors that impinge on and
shape the sustainable agricultural production system. Given our definition, the question
becomes: what insights for action can we draw? From our perspective, there are four primary
insights (our illustrations below draw on the work of [1]): First, the population or people whose
needs are to be met by a sustainable agricultural production system may be viewed from a
dual perspective. People are the beneficiaries of a sustainable agricultural production system.
Second, people are agents who must be proactive in defining what a sustainable food pro‐
duction system should be.
If a sustainable food production system is to be more than a theoretical abstraction, agents-the
beneficiaries-must be able to operationalize the system to produce sustainable benefits. In
operationalizing the concept of a sustainable agricultural production system, both values and
knowledge play a central role in this process. Knowledge tells us about the ecosystem and how
it supports agricultural production and what sort of sustainable development is possible, while
our system of values guides us in making a choice once our options have been made clear. In
this sense, moving from abstraction to implementation will be guided by the process illustrated
in Figure 1 below. As illustrated in Figure 1, a sustainable food production system must be
economically feasible “meaning such a system must be affordable and economically efficient.
The sustainable food production system must also be socially desirable “indicating that it must
be in sync with the cultural disposition and values of the agents or people it will serve.
Consistent with this view, [17], reject approaches to sustainability that focus on the description
and development of sustainable farming practices regardless of the socio-productive charac‐
teristics of the farming systems in which they are applied. Finally, a sustainable food produc‐
tion system must be in harmony with the ecology which supports it. If the food production
system is discordant with, or in any way detrimental to the ecology that supports it, such a
food system will not be sustainable.
