Issues and concerns in multiple objective management of natural resources in the agri-food industry

The considerable contribution by the agri-food industry to both economic development and higher living standards and to natural resource degradation can be attributed in large measure to pervasive technological progress and to the failure of the open market system, respectively. Food has been made abundant and, arguably, artificially cheap (a positive impact or externality). Adverse impacts of soil and water degradation, depletion of wildlife habitat, and reduced biodiversity are felt more off site than on. Such negative externalities devolve more from nonpoint than point source pollution, and frequently leave decision makers ignorant of the damage they are wreaking. Even those who are aware may not be motivated to adopt and use the wide range of conservation measures available because most: of those measures are not profitable. The externalities may in any case be safely ignored because they are not traceable to a specific source. The resultant market failure may be the best justification for public intervention. Public policies and private decisions to conserve soils and wildlife habitat and to abate downstream watercourse pollution need to be developed and applied judiciously and systematically. First, all policy and decision objectives should be clearly and definitively specified, preferably in quantitatively measurable terms, rather than as mere generalized aims. Second, a holistic approach to natural resource conservation and environmental management policy formulation is far preferable to a piecemeal one. Third, natural resource use decisions and resource conservation policy formulation should take place with both broader spatial as well as local and with long-term sustainability as well as short-term objectives in mind. In the temporal dimension, sustainability is necessarily to be evaluated in a long-term context. Shorter-term pollution abatement objectives may not always lead to longer-term sustainability objectives. Fourth, resource conservation and pollution abatement policies should in general not be universally applied. Universal application consistently fails to account for intersite variations in conservation needs, or to interdecision agent variations in conservation efforts expended. Not all conservation efforts lead automatically to reductions in pollution loadings into waterways or to improvements in desirable kinds of wildlife habitat, even though in general resource conservation is to be deemed preferable to degradation. In turn, not all reduced pollution loadings necessarily lead to water quality improvement. Even in the event of demonstrable water quality enhancement, a net benefit to society may not unequivocally follow. This underscores the importance of prespecifying policy objectives. It also implies the need for a targeted approach to resource conservation and environment management. Finally, in the event of conflict among multiple objectives being achieved some mechanism for conflict resolution should be explored.