Sustainability in the Balance
A Series on Social Issues in Sustainable Agriculture
Expanding the Definition of Sustainable Agriculture
by Patricia Allen, Debra Van Dusen, Jackelyn Lundy, and
Stephen Gliessman
Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture
University of California, Santa Cruz
Issue Paper #3, June 1991
Introduction
The long-termsustainability of agricultural systems concerns
diverse groups of people. They emphasize different aspects of
sustainability, from land stewardship and family farms, to low
external-input methods and food safety. Often there are two different
themes: sustainability defined primarily in terms of resource
conservation and profitability, and sustainability defined in terms
of pressing social problems in the food and agriculture system. Each
of these perspectives has been illustrated by William Lockeretz1 and
Miguel Altieri.2 In his review article on sustainability, Lockeretz
documented primarily production-oriented components of
sustainability. Altieri, on the other hand, has pointed out that
concentration on only the technological aspects of sustainability
results in, among other things, failure to distill the root causes of
nonsustainability in agriculture. While sustainability efforts need
to address both social and technical issues, they frequently
overemphasize the technical, a problem we see originating in the way
sustainability is often defined. Our purpose in this paper is to
discuss concerns about current sustainability definitions and suggest
a definition based upon a broader perspective.
Why Continue to Discuss Definition?
Among those working in sustainability there is often a feeling
that we need to devote less time to talking about the meaning of
sustainable agriculture and more time to implementing it. While this
is an understandable position, especially for those directly involved
in production agriculture, it also expresses a contradiction. How can
we form an improved agricultural system if it has not yet been
clearly conceptualized? Lockeretz1 queries, "Isn't something
backwards here?" and shows that, although there is a surge of
interest in agricultural sustainability, "even its most basic ideas
remain to be worked out." There is no generally accepted set of goals
for sustainable agriculture, and little agreement even on what and
who it is we intend to sustain.3 Is it possible, for example, to both
sustain production levels and preserve the natural environment? Who
should we work to sustain &endash; farmers, consumers, future
generations &endash; or should all of them be our priorities? Can we
truly sustain one group without considering others? Without
clarifying these goals the necessary changes in cultural,
infrastructural, technological, and political arenas are difficult to
negotiate. If we want sustainable agriculture to pursue a path
differentiable from that of conventional agriculture, we need to
explicitly state and gain some consensus on these goals. A clear,
comprehensive definition of sustainability forms the necessary
theoretical foundation for articulating sustainability goals and
objectives.
Current Definitions of Sustainability
The emergence of agricultural sustainability reflects many
people's dissatisfaction with conventional agricultural priorities,
especially the extent to which short-term economic goals have been
emphasized over environmental and social goals. In response, a number
of agricultural sustainability concepts have been developed under the
terms "alternative," "regenerative," "organic," "low-input," and
"sustainable." In this paper we refer to those definitions most
commonly espoused in the agricultural research community, definitions
which are predominant in the literature and are used as the basis of
sustainability programs. We examine what priorities these definitions
embody, how these priorities relate to those expressed in
conventional agriculture, and how developing sustainability would
benefit by broadening these priorities.
Althoughsustainability definitions include a range of
environmental, economic, and social characteristics, most focus
somewhat narrowly on environment, resource conservation,
productivity, and farm- and firm-level profitability. Charles
Francis4 defines sustainable agriculture as a "management strategy"
whose goal is to reduce input costs, minimize environmental damage,
and provide production and profit over time. The National Research
Council5 defines alternative agriculture as food or fiber production
which employs ecological production strategies to reduce inputs and
environmental damage while promoting profitable, efficient, long-term
production. For Richard Harwood6 the three principles for sustainable
agriculture are: "the interrelatedness of all parts of a farming
system, including the farmer and his family; the importance of the
many biological balances in the system; the need to maximize use of
material and practices that disrupt those relationships." According
to Vernon Ruttan7 enhanced productivity must be a key factor in any
sustainability definition. Rod MacRae, Stuart Hill, John Henning, and
Guy Mehuys8 adopt a sustainability definition which emphasizes
environmentally sound production practices. They note that
sustainable agriculture today is characterized mainly by products and
practices which minimize environmental degradation, although they
also point out the potential to move beyond this restrictive
application. In his review of sustainable agriculture definitions,
Lockeretz1 stresses agronomic considerations although he does note
the connection between changing production practices and associated
socioeconomic transformations.
Sustainabilitydefinitions such as the above focus on environmental
conservation which is to be achieved through changing farm production
practices without reducing farmers' profits. They challenge some but
not all of the assumptions that underlie agriculture's nonsustainable
aspects, generally neglecting questions of equity or social justice,
or devoting little specific language to it. Altieri,2 for one, has
challenged the narrowness of these approaches and their implicit
assumption that taking care of the environmental, production, and
economic aspects of sustainability automatically takes care of social
aspects: "Intrinsic to these [agroecology] projects is the
conviction that, as long as the proposed systems benefit the
environment and are profitable, sustainability will eventually be
achieved and all people will benefit." Altieri has noted that without
intervention on policy, research, and other levels, the more
appropriate technology developing in the name of sustainability will
merely perpetuate and enhance the current differentiation between
those members of society who benefit from agriculture and those who
do not. Furthermore, the technology itself will not be developed and
used unless we address the cultural, infrastructural, and political
factors which shape how it is designed and implemented. These factors
include scientific paradigms, fiscal policy, international trade,
domestic commodity programs, and consumer preferences.
Conventional Agricultural Priorities
Pursuing the dialogue on sustainability is essential in order to
make visible the often invisible assumptions and priorities which
have governed agricultural research, policy, and business decisions
leading to nonsustainable systems. Many of these assumptions and
priorities also influence sustainable agriculture programs. Such an
examination is critical if we are to avoid reproducing the problems
engendered by conventional decision-making processes in the re-
search, education, policy, and business institutions which determine
agriculture.
KennethDahlberg9 notes that assumptions and biases which may
occlude the development of sustainable agriculture concepts include:
separating ourselves from nature and viewing it as something which
must be dominated; measuring progress in increasing applications of
science and technology; emphasizing technology and formal social
institutions over natural systems and less formal aspects of society;
and failing to see how human societies fit into and are dependent
upon larger natural systems. We would add to Dahlberg's list the
tendency to overlook the needs of human beings who are separated from
us, whether it be by distance, by socioeconomic status, or by time
(future generations). These types of assumptions govern how we
understand the world and have been institutionalized in educational
and research programs. MacRae et al.8 note that many characteristics
of the research process responsible for conventional agriculture's
great productivity create obstacles to developing sustainable
agriculture. Among these are overreliance on reductionism and
quantification, scientists' belief in objective "truth," and the
divorce of research from its potential social consequences (that is,
that the potential consequences of research should not determine
whether the research is undertaken). Along with Patricia Allen10
those authors also cite obstacles posed by a peer review system and
publishing process which tend to reward individual "isolated"
achievement while discouraging long-range interdisciplinary work and
innovative ideas. This is aggravated by research funding from private
sources, which encourages research on technology development rather
than social analysis.
The same assumptions and biases which govern research and
education are also embedded in much of U.S. agricultural policy. They
are expressed primarily as short-term economic considerations such as
maximizing production, minimizing production costs and consumer
prices, and maximizing the market share of certain agricultural
commodities. These priorities have largely been those of the
agricultural sector, and not necessarily those that are best for
society at large.11
Limiting Assumptions
To address these types of whole-system issues we believe that
sustainable agriculture concepts must go beyond placing top priority
on environment and production practices and give greater emphasis to
social issues. Current definitions are often based on two assumptions
that we believe to be problematic:
1) that the farm is the primary locus for achieving agricultural
sustainability and 2) that short-term microeconomic profitability is
paramount.
Farm-centric Focus
Major institutions promulgating "sustainable" agriculture often
focus on the farm level rather than on the whole system. This is
clear from the priorities of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Low
Input Sustainable Agriculture (LISA) program. LISA focused on "low
input technologies [which] provide opportunities to reduce
the farmer's dependence on certain kinds of purchased inputs in ways
that increase profits, reduce environmental hazards, and ensure a
more sustainable agriculture for generations to come."12 As these
priorities demonstrate, agriculture is often thought of almost purely
in terms of farms and farmers, a perspective traceable to the period
in which most Americans were involved in farm production but which no
longer reflects agriculture's true scope. Even though the on-farm
transformation of resources into food and fiber is a core process of
the food and agri- culture system, it is but one of many components.
The system includes not only generating agricultural products, but
also distributing those products and the infrastructure which affects
production and distribution at regional, national, and global levels.
Interactions among the larger environmental, social, and economic
systems in which agriculture is situated directly influence
agricultural production and distribution. The following briefly
describes how these larger systems affect agriculture yet remain
unaccounted for in many sustainable agriculture programs.
The Environmental Context
Agricultural practices ranging from the development of irrigation
projects to the use of agrichemicals have often had negative
environmental impacts such as wildlife kills, pesticide residues in
drinking water, soil erosion, groundwater depletion, and
salinization. Substituting environmentally sound inputs for those
which are damaging is an important step in addressing these problems.
But ecological sustainability re- quires intensive management and
substantial knowledge of ecological processes which go far beyond
substitution13 and cannot be achieved merely by substituting inputs.
Such substitutions need to account for their complex and long-term
ecological consequences. Otherwise they may engender secondary and
perhaps more serious problems in the same way that conventional
solutions frequently have been shown to do. Viewing agricultural
systems as true ecosystems can serve as a model for bringing the
whole-systems perspective to bear on social and economic issues as
well.
Instead, however, sustainability programs often take conventional
approaches to solving these problems by changing the production
practices which are directly at fault without addressing the total
ecosystem context of either the problems or the alternative
production practices which show promise as solutions. An example is
the current emphasis on input substitution. Most projects funded by
the USDA Low-Input Sustainable Agriculture (LISA) program in its
first two years, for instance, explore how inputs which cause
environmental damage or incur expensive costs for the farmer can be
replaced with more environmentally or economically benign inputs
(e.g., studies on the use of soil solarization as a replacement for
methyl bromide fumigation in strawberries and on the use of cover
crops to control erosion and lessen fer- tilizer inputs). In most
cases single components of farming systems are being analyzed and
little attempt is made to place these analyses in the context of
whole agroecosystems.
The Social Context
Agriculture both affects and is affected by the larger society.
Farmer production decisions, for example, determine the diversity and
quality of foods available to consumers, and farm size and
technologies have been associated with the economic and social vigor
of rural communities.14 At the same time, society determines what is
possible at the farm level. Farmers lose valuable farmland when
encroaching urbanization creates zoning problems, inflates land
values, and generates urban pollution which lowers crop
productivity.
Production decisionsare heavily influenced by consumer decisions.
A recent example is farmers' voluntary discontinuation of Alar on
apples. Although farmers continued to endorse the safety of Alar,
they realized that this position was untenable in the face of
consumer concerns.
The international scope of agriculture also plays an important
role. Social and economic conditions in other countries and global
food supplies can greatly affect the viability of farming in local
regions, as evidenced when the world grain shortages of the 1970s led
to enormous expansion in U.S. grain production. When foreign demand
for U.S. grain subsequently declined, many American farmers' incomes
fell, often to the point where debts incurred to expand production
could not be paid, and major social and economic dislocations in the
grain belt occurred.
Efforts in sustainable agriculture are not unlike those of their
conventional counterparts in that they tend to serve certain
clientele selectively and generally do not evaluate the social
consequences of the technologies that sustainable agriculture
encourages. For example, organic farming strategies are often
supported because they are environmentally sound, and in terms of the
prices organic foods command, are profitable for farmers. An
unintended and unaddressed social consequence of this is that people
with low incomes often cannot afford organic products and thus are
denied access to food containing fewer pes- ticide residues.
The Economic Context
Agriculture's reciprocal relationship with the overall economy is
clear. The agricultural industry is a significant portion of the
nation's economy: in 1984 about 20 percent of U.S. jobs were in some
aspect of food and fiber production, distribution, or service15 and
these workers and their industries contributed 18 percent of the
gross national product.
The importance and volatility of food prices have made most
governments reluctant to let market forces alone set these prices.
Thus, a host of institutional measures have been implemented to
address agricultural prices in order to manage their effects on con-
sumer welfare, public coffers, farmer income, foreign exchange, food
security, nutrition, and food distribution. Such policies include
commodity programs, water and reclamation programs, import/export
policies, and research and extension programs. Larger economic
factors indirectly affect the agricultural system, factors such as
interest rates, trade policy and negotiations, the exchange value of
the U.S. dollar, and environmental regulations.
In the context of these economic policies, agriculture is subject
to nonagricultural constraints and conditions, a fact acknowledged
broadly in the liter- ature of both conventional and sustainable
agriculture. Yet most research and extension programs in both
conventional and sustainable agriculture do not recognize or address
these macrofactors. Sustainable agriculture efforts generally
concentrate on environmentally sound farm-level technologies which
are economically profitable for farmers to adopt. Less commonly do
such efforts address how the technologies they generate will affect
or be affected by larger economic concerns in the long run.
Short-term Profitability
A second assumption behind many sustainable agriculture
definitions, that short-term profitability is of ultimate importance,
is also common. This is a central tenet of LISA, forming the first of
its ten Guiding Principles: "If a method of farming is not
profitable, it cannot be sustainable."12 This is problematic,
particularly since there is little acknowledgement that profitability
is determined by policies, fiscal procedures, and business structures
that can obstruct sustainability. We recognize that short-term
profitability is important in commercial agricultural systems;
clearly, if growers are to adopt sustainable agricultural practices,
these must be profitable in the short run as well as the long run.
The problem lies in pursuit of short-run profitability at the expense
of environmental and social goals. In conventional agriculture, the
drive to maximize short-term profit has meant that many pressing
problems have been ignored or exacerbated. Natural resources have
often been treated as expendable commodities (although they cannot be
produced as commodities), and agriculture has functioned more for
financial gain than for human need. The social costs of production
have generally been neglected: chronic hunger, inequitable economic
returns and unsafe working conditions for farm labor, possible
negative health effects related to nutrition and agrichemical use,
and the decline of socioeconomic conditions in rural communities
associated with large-scale industrial agriculture. Subsuming social
goals to economic goals may easily be reproduced in sustainability
programs unless sustainability concepts address the fact that
profitability and social goals are often not compatible in current
economic systems.
Expanding the Concept of Agricultural Sustainability
A useful concept of agricultural sustainability needs not only to
acknowledge social issues as priorities equivalent to those of
production, environment, and economics, but to recognize the need for
balance among those disparate but highly interactive elements which
comprise agriculture. Toward this, we offer the following
perspective: A sustainable food and agriculture system is one which
is environmentally sound, economically viable, socially responsible,
nonexploitative, and which serves as the foundation for future
generations. It must be approached through an interdisciplinary focus
which addresses the many interrelated parts of the entire food and
agriculture system, at local, regional, national, and international
levels. Essential to this perspective is recognition of the
whole-systems nature of agriculture; the idea that sustainability
must be extended not only through time, but throughout the globe as
well, valuing the welfare of not only future generations, but of all
people now living and of all species of the biosphere.
Moving Beyond the Farm and Microeconomics
This sustainability concept moves beyond emphasis of farm-level
practices and microeconomic profitability to that of the entire
agricultural system and its total clientele. Richard Lowrance, Paul
Hendrix, and Eugene Odum16 describe a model which approximates a
whole-systems approach. They see four different loci or subsystems of
sustainability: 1) farm fields where agronomic factors are paramount;
2) the farm unit wherein microeconomic concerns are primary; 3) the
regional physical environment where ecological factors are central;
and 4) national and international economies where macroeconomic
issues are most important. Their model demonstrates that focusing on
only one level of the agricultural system neglects others that are
equally essential. A whole-systems perspective fosters an
understanding of complex interactions and their diverse ramifications
throughout agriculture and the systems with which it articulates.
This understanding is at the root of sustainability. Vernon
Ruttan17 describes an ever-widening comprehension of "whole system"
as he delineates three waves of social concerns which have arisen
about natural resource availability, environmental change, and human
well-being. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the first wave focused
on whether resources such as land, water, and energy were sufficient
to sustain economic growth. The second wave, in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, focused on the effect of growth-generated pollution on
the environment (asbestos, pesticides, smog, radioactive wastes). The
most recent concerns, manifest since the mid-1980s, also center on
adverse environmental effects, but the key distinction is the
transnational issues such as global warming, ozone depletion, and
acid rain.
As agriculture and its impacts become increasingly globalized, the
need for a whole-systems perspective, particularly in terms of
decision-making, become increasingly critical. Dahlberg9 observes
that although the impacts of modern industrial society are global,
the data and analytical tools we use to assess those impacts are
limited by national, disciplinary, or sectoral boundaries. Our
educational and research institutions tend to mirror this
shortcoming,8 with the result that the larger system contexts of
research questions are infrequently investigated and poorly
understood. Difficulties in apprehending and resolving problems whose
constituents are grounded in several interrelated systems are
compounded by the international community's disparate, competitive
political and economic systems. Nations act to promote their own
priorities but affect, often negatively, globally shared resources
and globally interdependent societies. Although nations and other
sociopolitical groups generate impacts beyond their borders, they are
generally incapable or unwilling to assess and react equitably (in
international terms) to the results of their actions. Pierre Crosson
and Norman Rosenberg18 note the inadequacy of information feedback
about significant environmental problems in modern societies, an
inadequacy which characterizes feedback about social problems as
well. Accounting for the system-wide implications of local actions
should be a primary ob- jective for sustainable agricultural systems.
The tools to facilitate such an accounting can only be developed
within a whole-systems perspective.
Including Equity
The definition of sustainability offered here places a priority
on broad-based equity considerations. We believe it is inadequate to
exclude social justice as a priority and that there is an ethical
requirement for greater equity in the agricultural system. Some have
combined concern for how we treat the environment with how we treat
our fellow human beings.19, 20, 21,22 For those focusing on the
latter, it is essential to look beyond sustaining our environmental
and economic ability to produce agricultural goods. It is equally
important to ensure that those goods are produced and distributed in
an equitable manner. A concern with this human values aspect of
agriculture involves a sweeping rather than localized concept of who
constitutes "us." Typically, resource conservation is discussed in
terms of its implications for farmers' profitability or our
descendants' food-producing capabilities. The sustainability
definition offered in this paper does not limit equity considerations
to these groups. A concern with equitable social relations in
agriculture requires defining "us" in terms of all fellow humans
&endash; not only farmers and future generations, but also
farmworkers, consumers, nonfarm rural residents, Third World urban
poor, and others. Sustainability in this sense is framed in terms of
both intergenerational and intragenerational equity. Thus, issues
such as farmworker rights and inner-city hunger are as central as
issues of soil erosion and groundwater contamination to the goals of
agricultural sustainability.
One of the most profound challenges facing agriculture is creating
a decision-making process which will fairly resolve equity issues.
Such a process must assess competing interests; evaluate
agriculture's costs and benefits, and the recipients of each; decide
fairly what the compromises must be; recognize and encourage shared
goals and common ground. In most discussions of sustainability either
environmental quality or social justice issues are emphasized, but
neither can be sup- ported wholly at the expense of the other.
Nourishing humans, ensuring social justice, and providing a
reasonable quality of life cannot be accomplished if agriculture's
resource base and environmental constraints are neglected. Likewise,
few would argue that environmental considerations should be pursued
at the expense of satisfying basic human needs. An equitable
agricultural system must foster a decision-making process which is
truly democratic, one which identifies not only what the costs and
benefits are but how to distribute them fairly among all sectors of
society.
Institutional Change
Many sustainability definitions, particularly those which guide
applied sustainable agriculture programs, are based on the primacy of
farm production and short-term profitability. As sustainable
agriculture programs have increasingly been incorporated into
long-established agricultural institutions they have manifested the
largely unquestioned intellectual assumptions and infrastructural
constraints which characterize their parent institutions. This is
problematic because conventional agricultural institutions have
fostered many technologies and policies counter to sustainable
agriculture goals.23 Such institutions have, for example, contributed
to concentration within agriculture; have not generally benefited
agricultural labor; and have systematically failed to examine their
impact on the environment, the structure of rural households and
communities, and the consequences of rural resident displacement.24
To situate new pro- grams designed to address these problems within
the framework which produced them is of questionable value unless
steps are taken to change the nature of that framework, for it
determines the way its researchers see the world, pose questions, and
define problems.
When agriculture is viewed in a whole-systems context and
sustainability is defined comprehensively, it is clear why the
current popular focus on farm pro- duction practices is insufficient
for achieving agricultural sustainability. Developing nonchemical
pest management methods, for example, will effectively reduce
pesticide use only if economic structures and policies encourage
their adoption by farmers. More importantly, one cannot conclude that
improved production practices will transform the agricultural system
into one that meets all environmental, economic, and social
sustainability goals. Social goals must be addressed explicitly. This
is why production techniques such as organic farming, while a likely
component of a sustainable food and agricultural system, cannot be
thought of as synonymous with sustainable agriculture.
Given the conventional institutional context of most state and
federal sustainable agriculture programs it is not surprising that
they tend to focus research on con- ventional priorities such as
production practices and efficiency and have not, for the most part,
aggressively addressed social and economic issues. Sustainability
priorities &endash; and the definitions which embody them &endash;
must be expanded to encompass the many factors affecting production
and distribution as well as the larger environmental, economic, and
social systems within which agriculture functions. This has been the
focus of the Agroecology Program since its inception in 1982. Through
conferences and publications* we have worked to expand the discussion
and practice of integrating these aspects of sustainability.
Recently, the University of California Sustainable Agriculture
Research and Education Program (UCSAREP) has broadened its agronomic
focus to include social, economic, and policy issues. SAREP defines
sustainable agriculture as integrating "...three main goals
&endash;environmental health, economic profitability, and social and
economic equity."25 Their grant program, which encourages research
and education on social, economic, and public policy issues affecting
food and agriculture, could become a model for other sustainable
agriculture programs such as LISA.
We believe that it is important to continue exploring the meaning
of agricultural sustainability. Before an improved agricultural
system can be developed the biases and structures that have led to
agricultural problems must be closely examined and concrete goals
articulated, based upon a broadened concept of agri- cultural
sustainability. The concept of sustainability offered in this paper
emphasizes that social goals are as important as environmental and
economic goals, and widens the opportunity to move beyond the narrow
agricultural priorities expressed in the past. It is based upon the
whole-systems, interactive nature of all aspects of the agricultural
system &endash; that problems and their resolutions must be conceived
not only in terms of their immediate time frames and local impacts,
but just as importantly, in terms of their future time frames and
their global impacts. It encourages emphasis on optimum production
over maximum production, the long term along with the short term, the
public's best interest over special interests, and the
contextualization of disciplinary work within interdisciplinary
frameworks. Our hope is that this definition helps advance the
discussion on developing a food and agriculture system that is
sustainable for everyone.
*For example, in1990 we organized a working group session and
conference, "Sustainable Agriculture: Balancing Social,
Environmental, and Economic Concerns" and followed this up with an
international symposium in 1991, "Varieties of Sustainability:
Reflecting on Ethics, Environment, and Economic Equity." Our issue
paper series concentrates on the broad social aspects of developing
sustainable food and agriculture systems, with titles such as
Sustainability in the Balance: Raising Fundamental Issues and What Do
We Want to Sustain?: Developing a Comprehensive Vision of Sustainable
Agriculture. Our forthcoming edited volume, Food for the Future:
Conditions and Contradictions of Sustainability, is an intensive
treatment of the theoretical and practical issues involved.
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This issue paper was originally prepared by the UC Santa Cruz
Agroecology Program (renamed the Center for Agroecology &
Sustainable Food Systems on July 1, 1994). The Center is a research
and education group which works toward the development of sustainable
food and agricultural systems. Copies are available, free of charge,
from CASFS, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, (408)
459-3240. See http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/casfs for additional Center
information and available publications. An earlier version of this
paper appeared in the American Journal of Alternative Agriculture,
1991, 6(1): 34-39.
This series of papers provides a forum for ideas on sustainable
agriculture issues. The opinions expressed are those of the authors,
and do not necessarily reflect the views of Center for Agroecology
& Sustainable Food Systems' members.
