What Is Sustainable Agriculture? A Systematic Review

Jens Newig,Nicolas Jager,Julia Leventon,Sarah Velten

doi:10.3390/su7067833

Jens Newig, Nicolas Jager + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su7067833

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Jun 18, 2015
Citations: 313	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Leuphana University of Lüneburg

Abstract

The idea of a sustainable agriculture has gained prominence since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987. Yet, the concept of sustainable agriculture is very vague and ambiguous in its meaning, which renders its use and implementation extremely difficult. In this systematic review paper, we aim to advance understandings of sustainable agriculture from a social science and governance perspective by identifying areas of complementarity and concern between emerging definitions of sustainable agriculture. For this purpose, we conducted a structured literature review in combination with a cluster analysis in order to (1) identify the overall ideas and aspects associated with sustainable agriculture; (2) detect patterns and differences in how these ideas and aspects are adopted or applied; (3) evaluate how the different ideas and aspects of sustainable agriculture are combined in the scientific debate, and assess whether these different conceptions match with those that have been claimed to exist in the debate. There are two valuable outcomes from this research. The first is a framework for understanding the components of sustainable agriculture. The second outcome is in highlighting ways for actors involved with sustainable agriculture to deal with the complexity and multiplicity of this concept in a constructive manner.

Highlights

An agriculture able to continually provide food and other resources to a growing world population is of crucial importance for human existence and for any human activity
In objective 3, we apply a cluster analysis methodology to identify how the different ideas and aspects of sustainable agriculture are combined in the scientific debate, and explore whether these different conceptions match with those that have been claimed to exist
From the occurrences of the Strategy and Fields of Action-themes, we find that the main focus for the realization of sustainable agriculture has so far been on rather technology-centered, on-farm solutions: The most mentioned Strategies are the Economics-Based Strategy and Adaptive

Summary

Introduction

An agriculture able to continually provide food and other resources to a growing world population is of crucial importance for human existence and for any human activity. Like the notion of sustainable development itself, the concept of sustainable agriculture is ambiguous in its meaning [11] This characteristic has led to the emergence of a great variety of different discourses, views or paradigms of sustainable agriculture [10,12,13,14,15,16,17,18] and rendered the discussion and implementation of this idea extremely difficult. It allows for exploitation of the concept by vested interests who use the notion for their own purposes [19]. Collections of definitions are found in [20] and [21], and include: Sustainable agriculture is an “integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site specific application that will, over the long term: (a) satisfy human food and fiber needs; (b) enhance environmental quality; (c) make efficient use of non-renewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate appropriate natural biological cycles and controls; (d) sustain the economic viability of farm operations; and (e) enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.” 1990 U.S Farm Bill [22]

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