Subject: Agroecosystem Health

From: [email-masked]
Date: 31 Jan 1995 21:22:58 -0000

Re: John Ikerd's paper on Sustainable agriculture. One of the best reviews of 
why has been meant in the literature by sustainable agriculture is by Smit & 
Smithers, "Sustainable agriculture: interpretations, analyses and prospects" 
in the Canadian Journal of Regional Science, Autumn, 1993. It clarifies a lot 
of the different scales of interest (fields, farms, regions, etc) and how 
they interact with outcomes of interest (food sufficiency, environmental 
stewardsip etc) to produce different definitions. In a major research project 
at the University of Guelph, we have taken a different tactic. We can speak 
of the health of animals, and of farms... why not of agroecosystems, 
including all their ecological and socio-economic interacting parts? We are 
in the process of characterizing the hierarchical, complex nature of 
agroecosystems and how one might characterize their health, including work by 
economists, sociologists, ecologists, crop scientists, health scientists, 
philosophers (since health includes value judgements)  etc. Longevity, or 
sustainability, is a secondary by-product. The fact that we are healthy means 
that we have the capacity to live long, but does not guarantee it. In the 
same way, at farm, community, bioregional, national and global levels we want 
to retain the capacity to live as well as we can. We also want to sustain 
that capacity. We also had an international workshop on the topic of 
Agroecosystem Health in Ottawa last June; limited nos. of proceedings are 
available. For more information, contact the Project Manager, Agroecosystem 
Health Project, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Blackwood Hall, University 
of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canad N1G 2W1.