Agricultural Sustainability: Principles, Processes, and Prospects

Take a balanced look at ways to ensure food security and to work to erase hunger around the world

Agriculture is the most aggressively managed ecosystem. Agricultural Sustainability: Principles, Processes, and Prospects provides a comprehensive examination of all facets of agricultural sustainability, beginning with the history of the evolution of the concept to the present. Challenges to sustainability are clearly presented along with practical strategies to counter prospective problems. This vital resource considers options for the future, as well as reviewing past approaches for their value in today''s world.

When one considers that the alternative to agricultural sustainability is the collapse of the world''s food systems, it is understood that compromise is impossible. Agricultural Sustainability takes a holistic approach to the issues that are involved in making agriculture ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible around the world. The book is divided into three parts. Part One clarifies the concept of agricultural sustainability, bringing a rational and balanced view of the core elements. Part Two discusses ways to promote sustainability in the world, including practical scientific and technological processes for improving yields while ensuring food security for future generations. Part Three peers into future decades, reviewing the vision documents of international agencies, their perceptions and expectations for the years ahead, and present dysfunctional aspects in the current food system. The book is extensively referenced and includes figures and charts to clearly explain data.

The book examines:

• the historic evolution of the concept of agricultural sustainability
  
• the combined effects of a multiplicity of agricultural systems
  
• concepts for validating the sustainability of a production system
  
• the role of natural capital in production
  
• the role of science and technology in sustainable use
  
• managing land, water, biodiversity, and energy
  
• quantitative approaches to measuring agricultural sustainability
  
• the current status of agriculture--and predictions for its growth in the coming decades
  
• case studies of agricultural growth from India and China
  
• problems--and possibilities--of creating a hunger-free world by the end of this century
  
  

Agricultural Sustainability is crucial, enlightening reading for field workers in NGOs and agricultural extensions; personnel in local, national, and international developmental organizations; and educators and students of sustainable agricultural production, food security, rural development, environmental science, and the conservation of natural resources.