Sustainability and Development
Many were asking the question – are the current practices viable? For how long can our communities and planet survive our consumptions of resources and creation of pollution? The United Nation’s World Commission on Environment and Development in its report Our Common Future in 1987 defined “sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” For some the notion of sustainability meant going back to -- the old way of doing things, while for others who looked at the future with uneasiness, it meant reframing the current concept of economic growth and development in terms of durability and equity (U.N Report, 1987. Our Common Future. ch. 2, 1987).
The concept stresses that there are many natural limits that we are currently denying. A fundamental principal of sustainability is the appreciation of the interdependence of environment, economic and social equity concerns. And it suggests that individuals, businesses, governments ought to explore options that do not sacrifice of the Es for another if we are considering the long-term viability of our economic base. The process of uniformly incorporating these three concerns (economic, environment, and social equity) is often referred to as the three legs of a stool; the metaphor implies that removing even one would lead to instability and imbalance.
In much of the world today, 40 percent of the truck traffic comes from shuttling of food over long distances (McKibben). Re-framing the current fossil-fuel based industrial agricultural in terms of sustainable agriculture could slow down the harmful outcomes associated with two major trends: the declining of hearth’s natural resources and the rising in population and consumption.
Re-thinking Industrial Agricultural
A food system is a process that aims to create a more direct link between the producers (farmers) of food and fiber and the consumers of the food. This system consists of several components, including production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste disposal. A food system can be characterized as being local, regional, national, or global (Mckibben). Improvements in productivity have created benefits for example, increased output, lower prices, convenience, year-round availability, but also problems for instance loss of diversity in crops, nitrate pollution of ground-water, less nutritious food, pesticide residues in food, and soil depletion (McKibben).
In the 1987 report Our Common Future, the World Commission on Environment and Development recommended that productivity increases, in both developed and developing countries, ought to be based on better-controlled application of water and chemicals, as well as on more extensive use of organic fertilizers and non-chemical means of pest control. These alternatives could be promoted only within the framework of agricultural policies that are based on ecological, social, and economic realities (U.N. Report, 1987. Our Common Future. chap. 5).
Bill Vorley of the International institute for Environment and Development , (IIED) also reports on the need for a restructuring of the global agrifood markets. He charges that the continuing process of marginalization of small and mid-sized peasantry and family farming, in both developed and developing countries and the continued land degradation are seriously compromising our future, and these practices must come to an end in order to move toward equitable and sustainable agriculture.
Vorley claims that the root cause of today’s apparent inability to move towards sustainability derived form “the liberalization of agricultural markets and relocation of risks from the state to the individuals, and the shift from producer-driven to buyer driven supply chain”. This means that a customer-oriented doctrine controls the food supply chain from product concept to consumer purchases; this is a doctrine that is measured principally for profitability only. He also speaks of “an urgent need to be realistic about sustainable agriculture, for it will require greater appreciation of where the control lies in the agrifood chain and the rapid shift in balance from the state to the firm”. Vorley remarks that what we have been witnessing is the emergence of a dual economy across the farming world and that in many instances we see “the simultaneous integration and exclusion of communities with respect to agrifood system”.
George Bird director of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture also talks about the fact that in 1993, 15 percent of agricultural enterprises were responsible for 85 percent of the food, feed, and fiber produced on U.S. and he reports that the current structure and technology of the industrial agriculture agribusiness is detrimental to the long-term interest of the nation’s agriculture and natural resources .
