Today rural manufacturing accounts for two and half times as many jobs as agriculture and forestry. Sustaining agriculture and other renewable resource industries will be critical to sustaining many rural communities. Just what that agriculture may look like is the topic of lively debate.
Sustainable agriculture means many things to many people.
It is perhaps arguable that sustainability in agriculture is essentially an energy issue. Beginning in the 20 th century, the energy of human and animal labor and wastes has been replaced with the use of fossil fuels and mechanization. Today nearly half the energy consumed in the United States goes into our agricultural system. This transformation of agriculture has been tremendously productive in terms of delivering large quantities of inexpensive food, yet it comes at a social and environmental cost to rural communities and landscapes. From a purely ecological perspective, defining sustainable agriculture is relatively straightforward.