What is sustainable agriculture?

People have been talking about Ecologically Sustainable Development for over a decade, and calls for “sustainable agriculture” are increasing.

“Sustainability” is at once extremely important and practically useless. It consists of a set of concepts which are fundamentally different in their nature. While there is a general agreement that sustainability involves the ‘triple bottom line’ of economic, environmental and social aspects, sustainability is not quantifiable and no satisfactory definition of it exists. (Pannell & Scilizzi)

So too with “sustainable agriculture”. It is common to hear calls for “sustainable agriculture” or the adoption of more sustainable practices – but what does this mean? What are un-sustainable practices? In what way are they un-sustainable? How do we determine if a practice is sustainable? How do you change from one practice or system to another?

We don’t know what sustainability will look like when we get there, so all we can do is take the journey one step at a time and learn along the way. There can be no defined outcomes or universal prescriptions, so the focus must be on the process of discovering better systems and practices.

Let’s begin by dumping the term “sustainable agriculture”, and look at “better” agriculture and ‘better” practices.

Better agricultural practices will be those which produce food and fibre without depleting the earth’s resources or polluting the environment. Central to achieving this will be the development of practices and management systems which mimic natural systems and use the available natural resources (such as energy, water, soil fertility) as efficiently as possible.

Some advances have been made within different agricultural enterprises towards such management systems. Links are provided on this site to some of the advances in some enterprises. Grazing management is discussed in more detail since grazing is the most extensive agricultural activity within the Hunter region.