Sustainable Farming Systems

Abstract

As previous chapters have shown, the meaning of ‘sustainable’ is both socially constructed and contested; in addition the term can be more usefully considered as a desired process or trajectory of change rather than a prescribed condition. But instead of revisiting these issues in the context of farming systems, attention is directed to the three widely recognised dimensions of sustainable development as applied to agriculture, namely environment, economy and society. Following Bowler (2001a):

• the environmental (ecological) dimension of sustainable agricultural change includes the utilisation of natural capital, such as soil (land) and water, so that their use is reproducible over succeeding generations, the enhancement of biodiversity, and the recycling of farm wastes and nutrients so as not to cause pollution of the biosphere, especially water resources

• the economic dimension concerns the maintenance of supplies of agricultural raw materials and services to both the farm and non-farm populations, but including the attainment of satisfactory levels in the economic returns to farm land, labour and capital, and in the costs of state subsidies to farming. Here the definitions of ‘satisfactory’ are contested between farm and non-farm interests and are largely politically determined

• the social dimension includes the retention of an optimum level of farm population, the maintenance of an acceptable quality of farm life, the equitable distribution of material benefits from economic growth, and the building of ‘capacity’ in the farm community to participate in the development process, including the use of knowledge to create new choices and options over time. In this dimension, the terms ‘optimum’, ‘acceptable’ and ‘equitable’ are all