From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture
Subject: Some scope for sustainability issues
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 11:12:01 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


The following material is an extract from the Introduction to:

    Lefroy T. and Hobbs R.
    Ecological Indicators for Sustainable Agriculture
    Australian Journal of Soil & Water Conservation
    Vol. 5, No. 4, November 1992


        Achieving sustainability in agriculture involves simultaneously
        satisfying ecological, economic and social requirements. It is
        possible to define the required economic and social conditions
        relatively easily in terms of the viability of the individual
        farm businesses, the viability of the regional economy, and
        the support of rural populations. The ecological conditions
        that need to be met are more difficult to define and this
        remains a major obstacle to the development of sustainable
        agricultural systems.
                                        .
                                        .
                                        .

        One of the big stumbling blocks in the definition of
        sustainability is that of scale. The term sustainability is
        meaningless unless spatial and temporal scales are defined.
        This is because different constraints tend to dominate at
        different scales.

      * At the scale of the individual field, where most agricultural
        research and extension has been directed up to now, the
        dominant constraints are agronomic and the dominant goal is
        the productivity of crops and pastures over several seasons.

      * At the farm level, the dominant constraints are economic and
        the overriding goal is the survival of the farm business over
        a time scale often expressed in units of several generations
        of the farm family.

      * At the landscape level, the dominant constraints are ecological
        and the goal is maintenance of the life-supporting capacity of
        the catchment or landscape unit over a time scale considerably
        longer than units of several human generations.

      * At the regional or national level, the dominant constraints
        are macroeconomic, the goals a mix of domestic food supply,
        generation of export income and support of a rural population,
        while the time scale is determined by the planning horizons of
        politics and economics.

        The various aspects of sustainability (ecological, social and
        economic) must be determined at their appropriate level. In
        the cases of the four processes mentioned above, they operate
        at scales vastly different from the human scale and do not
        recognise imposed economic, social or political boundaries.


These are important. Rather than berating each other over details,
while I have myself as an anthropologist weighed heavily toward the
the social dynamics of and stresses affecting rural communities, I do
think there needs to be a high level of integrated, interdisciplinary
discussion of all these various dimensions and conceptual levels of,
if not a single working definition of sustainability, at least some
clear understanding among us of the global scope of the issue at hand.

I look forward very much to your informed and thoughtful comments.

--
Gil Hardwick                          Internet:  gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                  Fidonet:  3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                         Voice:  (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
Xref: sparky alt.sustainable.agriculture:468 bionet.plants:745 rec.gardens:8537 misc.rural:2636