Sustainability of Agriculture: Issues, Observations and Outlook

Sustainability of agriculture is based on economic returns, environmental preservation, and sociological factors associated with quality of life. Yet, its components, except for economic return, are difficult to quantify, and their relative importance varies among economic and geographic regions. Environment-friendly agriculture adds emphasis to environmental factors and eco-friendly agriculture adds biodiversity to the environmental component. But sociological factors are very site-specific and hard to measure and value. Internationalization of agriculture puts pressure on sustainability because world trade is based on economics, and the role of private industry and the utility of most agricultural research are perceived to favor the economic component. Local people and national governments add emphasis to the environment and some to the social factors. As national economies improve, however, more emphasis by the public and national governments is placed on the environment and grows to include biodiversity. But actual biodiversity tends to decrease as incomes grow, due partly to larger fields and more mechanization. The combined effects of global climate change, WTO-GATT negotiations, and availability of energy and water will strongly influence crops, cropping systems, world agriculture and sustainability. Diets are changing, especially in Asia with reduced dependence on rice. And, expectations by the global public regarding the environment, biodiversity, food quality, food safety, and other multifunctional outputs that enhance quality of life are expanding the meaning of sustainability and presenting a new paradigm for agriculture. Biotechnology and precision-agriculture offer new potentials, mainly in countries that honor and protect patents. New public policies will emerge to regulate development and use of technologies to insure they are consistent with the major role of agriculturalists, to produce food in ways that assure sustainability with defined emphasis on each of its components. (C) 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.