VAE 311: Principles and Techniques of Veterinary and AH Extension (2+1)

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

The phrase “sustainable agriculture” is open to many interpretations (Conway and Barbier, 1990 )

• For agriculturalists it embodies a desire to consolidate and build upon the achievements of the green revolution. They equate sustainability with food sufficiency, and sustainable agriculture can embrace any means toward that end.
• For environmentalists, though, the means are crucial. Sustainable agriculture represents a way of providing sufficient food and fibre that complements and, indeed, enhances our natural resource endowment of forests, soils and wildlife. For them, sustainability means a responsibility for the environment – a stewardship of our natural resources.
• For economists, sustainability is a facet of efficiency, not short-run efficiency alone, but the use of scarce resources in such a fashion as to benefit both present and future generations.
• Finally, sociologists see sustainable agriculture as a reflection of social values. They define it as a development path that is consonant with traditional cultures and institutions.
• They defined agriculture sustainability as the ability to maintain productivity, whether of a field or farm or nation, in the face of stress or shock. A stress may be increasing salinity, or erosion, or debt; each is a frequent, sometimes continuous, relatively small, predictable force having a large cumulative effect.