Source: Bird, E.A.R., G.L. Bultena, and J.C. Gardner. 1995.
What is sustainable agriculture? p. 45-65. In J.C. Gardner, K. Jamtgard, and F. Kirschenmann. Planting the future:
developing an agriculture that sustains land and community. Iowa State Univ. Press, Ames.
The third chapter in this book establishes a
guideline definition for sustainable farms. Such a definition is needed to
compare sustainable and conventional farms and discuss farm policy in the four
focus states of Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, and North Dakota. The author first
establishes an operational definition of sustainability and then demonstrates
how the definition was used to classify farms. A narrow definition of
environmental sustainability is employed in order to examine linkages between
environmental sustainability, economic viability, and social conditions caused
by different farm practices. Sustainable farmers are evaluated according to
three criteria: they use reduced amounts of off-farm inputs, strive to develop
positive ecological practices, and have a commitment to the goal of
establishing an ecologically sustainable agriculture on their farms. This
narrow operational definition was applied to the general farm populations of
the four states using two phases of mailed questionnaires and interviews. This
process was designed to fairly select representative farms for further study.
The chapter concludes by acknowledging that the definition of sustainable
agriculture is controversial. Some believe sustainable agriculture is the
reduction of chemical inputs, while others believe it is the utilization of
more on-farm inputs. The definition of sustainable agriculture from this
chapter is used to differentiate farms and farming practices throughout the
rest of the book and could be applied to any farm operation. Additional issues
raised by the text include what sustainable farms look like, farmers'
perceptions of sustainability, practices that define sustainability, the
sustainability of organic farming, and the socio-economic impacts of
sustainable practices.
Abstract author: Ryan J. Voiland, 19
November 1996.
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