PROCESSING TOMATO CROPPING SYSTEM SUSTAINABILITY PATHWAYS: STATE OF THE ART AND RULES OF THUMB

Abstract

Sustainable development is a strategic objective of the European Union. The EU commitment to sustainable development was first set out in Gothenburg adopting the “EU Sustainable Development Strategy” (2001), which was endorsed by the Barcelona EU Council communication (2002) and recently confirmed as a core strategic objective as reported in the communication “Strategic objectives 2005-2009” (2005). From the 1990s “sustainability” has become a keyword for most of the social, economic and ecological issues, mainly with regard to mid or long-term regional/global development, however there is no generally acknowledged definition of “sustainable agriculture”. Even thought several attempt to define the sustainable agriculture criteria was made during the last five years, the expression is still used especially in the context of analysing the negative effects of certain crop production methods. Such a “negative approach” to sustainable agriculture it causes a sharp reduction of the overall view, focusing to some specific, and often partial, targets such pest management, fertilisation and water use for irrigation. As a result, much of the applied sustainable agriculture techniques was relied on a simple input substitution rather than an ecological system approach. A more holistic understanding of the cropping system and of the whole production chain is needed, following Assets-Based Model proposed by Pretty (1999). To reach and keep a good balance in the three-dimensional dynamic schema among Ecology, Economy and Social equity, proposed in the Brundtland report (1987), will be quite difficult in a complex reality such the processing tomato production chain. Some aspect should be highlighted and discussed: