The guiding principles of sustainable development apply to sustainable agriculture: profitability, socially acceptable, and ecologically viable.
What is sustainable agriculture?
The notion of sustainability, or sustainable development, was defined at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The Norwegian Prime Minister at the time, Gro Harlem Bruntland, described it as
"development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
This concept was created as a direct consequence of the growing awareness, which started in the 1970s, of the fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem. It echoes the words of Saint Exupéry, who died in 1944, “we do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children”. Sustainable agriculture can be described in the same way, based on 3 pillars.
Definition of sustainable agriculture
The definition of sustainable agriculture is not written in stone and is described in different ways. However, a three-part pattern appears fairly consistently and is present in the following definition.
According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation (a United Nations organisation)),
"to be sustainable, agriculture must meet the needs of present and future generations:
- While ensuring profitability.
- While preserving environmental health.
- While guaranteeing social and economic equity.
Sustainable food and agriculture contribute to the four pillars of food security –availability, access, utilisation, and stability – and cover the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic)".
This definition reflects the principles of sustainable development. The aim is to produce while respecting ecological, economic and social limits without which long-term production would not be possible.
The three pillars of sustainable development, and consequently, sustainable agriculture are: environmental, social, and economic.
What is a sustainable farm?
A sustainable farm is based on farmers’ choices in terms of production methods and activities, as well as participating in the development of the locality, which includes the people and environmental protection. For the IDEA (from the French « Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles » (Farm Sustainability Indicators)), sustainable farms adhere to 5 essential pillars: local integration, the capacity to produce goods and services autonomously from their own resources, the capacity to be productive over time, resilience to adversity, and general responsibility.
According to Zahm et al. (2015), a sustainable farm is a viable, liveable, transferable, and reproducible farm that has a socially responsible approach to development.
This is a global vision of farm sustainability relating not only to the production units, but the overall economic, environmental, and social impact of an entire sector.
Source:
Zahm, F., et al. (2015). Evaluating sustainability of farms: introducing a new conceptual framework based on three dimensions and five key properties relating to the sustainability of agriculture.