Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
whih agricultural systems are the most eicient, and suggest that alternative prac-
tices and systems whih reduce negative externalities should be sought. his is what
Ken Giller has called the North-South divide between the 'effluents of affluence' and
poverty caused by scarcity (Titonell et al. , 2009)
Sustainable agricultural intensification is defined as producing more output from
the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts and at the
same time increasing contributions to natural capital and the flow of environmental
services (Prety, 2008; Royal Society, 2009; Godfray et al. , 2010; Conway and Waage,
2010).
A sustainable production system would thus exhibit most or all of the following
atributes:
• Utilizing crop varieties and livestok breeds with a high ratio of productivity to
use of externally- and internally-derived inputs.
• Avoiding the unnecessary use of external inputs.
• Harnessing agro-ecological processes suh as nutrient cycling, biological nitrogen
fixation, allelopathy, predation and parasitism.
• Minimising use of tehnologies or practices that have adverse impacts on the en-
vironment and human health.
• Making productive use of human capital in the form of knowledge and capacity
to adapt and innovate, and social capital to resolve common landscape-scale prob-
lems.
• uantifying and minimising the impacts of system management on externalities
suh as greenhouse gas emissions, clean water availability, carbon sequestration,
biodiversity, and dispersal of pests, pathogens and weeds.
As both agricultural and environmental outcomes are pre-eminent under sus-
tainable intensiication, suh sustainable agricultural systems cannot be deined by
the acceptability of any particular tehnologies or practices (there are no blueprints).
If a tehnology assists in eicient conversion of solar energy without adverse ecolo-
gical consequences, then it is likely to contribute to the system's sustainability. Sus-
tainable agricultural systems also contribute to the delivery and maintenance of a
range of valued public goods, suh as clean water, carbon sequestration, lood pro-
tection, groundwater reharge, and landscape amenity value. By deinition, sustain-
able agricultural systems are less vulnerable to shoks and stresses. In terms of teh-
nologies, therefore, productive and sustainable agricultural systems make the best
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