General Discussion - Integrated Assessment of Health and Sustainability of Agroecosystems - page 199

objectively definable states of dynamic systems that, once described, can be effec-
tively pursued.
Based on the type of indicators selected by communities, it seems that com-
munities perceived agroecosystem health from a fitness assessment rather than a
diagnostic perspective. In the latter perspective, the objective of the process is to
discover and characterize pathological processes and the risk factors associated with
them. The former focuses on the capabilities of the system and what enhances it.
Based on this perspective, the key health attributes are productivity, vigor, resilience,
equitability, stability, and integrity. The objective of an agroecosystem health assess-
ment is to understand how the system can achieve and sustain desired community
outcomes. In contrast, the objectives based on a diagnostic perspective would be
to discover potential risk factors to the attainment of community goals. Important
attributes in this case would include equitability, elasticity, inertia, and vulnerability.
While the fitness assessment perspective was used by the communities to help them
set reasonable goals for their system, ignoring the diagnostic perspective resulted in
failure of community action plans after a significant amount of resources had been
expended, resulting in a lot of frustration and decline in the communities' capacity
for collective action.
Communities were able to develop a reasonably parsimonious suite of indica-
tors. This is at odds with the assertion that ecosystems present an almost-infinite
list of potential indicators. This assertion stems from models of agroecosystems
as dynamic states of a hard system. In contrast, communities and researchers in
this project modeled agroecosystems as problem-based soft systems. Indeed, ques-
tions of sustainability and health would have little relevance in systems that do not
include some components of human influence. The question of sustainability implies
a human activity system and an existence of a complex problem situation. Building
problem-based models of agroecosystems limits the choice of indicators to those
related to the subsystems in which the problems occur and are manifest. Building
problem-based models requires experiential knowledge of the system, emphasizing
the importance of community knowledge of their agroecosystem.
8.4 KIambu aGRoecosystem
Scarcity of farmland is an important determinant of the nature of smallholder agri-
culture in Kiambu. This is evidenced by the differences in agricultural practices
and productivity among the six villages (Chapter 2). The availability of markets and
demand for produce are other important issues, as evidenced by the abandonment of
recommended farm enterprises (based on agroecological suitability), such as coffee
and tea production in Mahindi and Kiawamgira and sheep production in Thiririka,
for those that are largely market driven, such as dairy and vegetable production.
While these trends indicate adaptability in a general sense, they could also be reflec-
tive of some kind of instability in the system given the relatively short time span over
which they are occurring. More important, these communities seem to have a high
degree of adaptability regarding the kind of farm enterprises in which they are will-
ing to engage, and their farming decisions appear to be linked to market availability,
indicating a high degree of effectiveness.