Nature is inherently diverse - even though industrial production methods demand homogeneity or sameness. These incompatibilities are primary sources of the non-sustainability of industrial systems. Sustainable systems must conform to marketing and ecological niches inherent in nature - including human nature. Small farms are real farms. Many small farm families depend on farming for a significant part of their economic, social, and spiritual way of life, if not their whole livelihood.
Small farms can conform to the economic and ecological niches of markets and of nature.
Small farms also are consistent with the visions of futurists for a post-industrial society. People will be at the center of the knowledge-based era of future human progress. To sustain a desirable quality of life on small farms, people must be at the center - as producers, as customers, as neighbors and fellow human beings. We have destroyed so many wild beasts, wild rivers, plagues, and pests that we now risk destroying ourselves - destroying human civilization. Sustainable agriculture is a paradigm that seeks to work in harmony with nature and with people, and thus, represents a fundamental departure from past attempts to conquer nature.