Abstract
Early proponents of sustainable agriculture faced considerable resistance and initiated a long-lasting discussion over strategies for sustainable agriculture. This controversy has re-emerged recently in the discussion of agro-ecology versus sustainable intensification. Fourteen agricultural professionals participated in a guided discovery learning process on six agricultural operations in Florida that are considered to be good examples of sustainability. The six operations included large and small farms, organic and conventional farms, livestock and crop enterprises, and traditional and direct sales marketing approaches. The objective of the process was to identify the principles that the operators use to guide their specific management decisions, including decisions with economic, environmental, and social consequences. Participants studied information about each operation and created a set of questions to ask the manager(s) about the underlying philosophy and principles that guide the management and then spent one to six hours at each site. The information was analyzed in small groups after each visit, and a summative analysis was completed after all site visits were completed. Although these operations are very diverse in terms of characteristics like size, enterprise mix, farm capital, technologies used, marketing strategies, and manager experience, the study showed also similarities across the farms in the principles that guide their decision-making. From these principles, nine broad principles of sustainable agriculture were identified. Most contemporary theoretical concepts about social, economic, and environmental sustainability are reflected in the operating principles of these businesses.
Highlights
Sustainable agriculture has grown from an ideal championed primarily by environmentalists like Wes Jackson (1971) to a mainstream program of the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Kirschenmann, 2004; USDA, Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program, 2012)
The research reported here examined the broad, underlying principles that farmers and other actors in the agri-food system use in the practice of sustainable agriculture. We explored these issues as part of a field experience supported by USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) Fellows Program
Our research suggests that the distinctions drawn between the agro-ecological and sustainable intensification proponents may not be nearly as clear for farmers trying to practice sustainable agriculture as the literature would suggest
Summary
Sustainable agriculture has grown from an ideal championed primarily by environmentalists like Wes Jackson (1971) to a mainstream program of the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Kirschenmann, 2004; USDA, Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program, 2012). The call for a change in agricultural practices seemed unjustified to most in the 1970s when land values, yields, and profits were sky high, but the 1980s ushered in one of the worst farm crises in U.S history. In Iowa, land values fell from US$2,147 per acre in 1981 to US$787 in 1986 (Duffy, 2014). The traditional American family farm, were hard hit, as was the Midwestern rural heartland (Brasier, 2005; Murdock, Leistritz & Hamm, 1988). By the mid1980s, leadership for an alternative to traditional agriculture emerged and the term sustainable agriculture was adopted to embody its ideals
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