Sustainable agriculture: an explanation of a concept

Close relationships between agriculture and many areas of human activity determine countless interlinkages with global issues of natural environment protection, human population increase, food supply, industry and world trade. This broad context promotes different perceptions of sustainable agriculture by different interest groups. Profitable diversification away from overproduction of basic commodities and satisfaction of environmental pressure groups are major preoccupations in developed countries. Elsewhere the main concerns is to maintain a trend of increasing production: food security with a future dimension. Achieving this depends essentially on protecting the agricultural resource base. Inputs and input substitution are important co-related issues but the core of sustainability is the avoidance of any attrition of the potential for future production; this demands that we guard soil, water sources, grazing lands and gene pools against loss and degradation. Though superficially biophysical or technical in nature, most problems of resource degradation and eroding potential are rooted in economic, social and political issues; few such problems will be solved unless the primacy of these issues is recognized and addressed. Sustainable agriculture will likely remain elusive until governments and other agencies accept it as arising only as the outcome of a synthesis of strategies on population, employment, economic planning, technical research and national investment.