This specialization creates enormous vulnerability to disease, pests and weather related disasters. With its exclusive emphasis on labor efficiency and mass, uniform production, industrial agriculture has also decimated rural communities. Industrial agriculture is based largely on an extractive economy which extracts cheap raw materials from rural communities to add value esewhere, while selling expensive value-added production inputs back to rural commnities. A second path at this fork in the road has recently received attention. That path is sustainable agriculture.
Sustainable agriculture is based on the principle of working in harmony with nature.
It relies heavily on using nature's own evolutionary powers to achieve production goals. It places as much emphasis on land and energy efficiency as it does on labor efficiency. From the perspective of maintaining optimum, diverse food production with efficient use of land and energy, this type of agriculture is proving very successful. The principles of sustainable agriculture are similar to the principles of sustainability in other arenas. Conservation biologists are now telling us that due to the ever changing, and site-specific character of natural ecosystems, there is no way that we can properly manage natural resources without populating local ecosystems with people who have been acquainted with those systems long enough and intimately enough to know how to manage them.