From d.richardson@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDUTue Jul 18 22:58:08 1995 Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 21:24:29 -0500 From: Dick Richardson To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: number of sustainable farmers? I've been waiting to see what was said about this question that implies a goal -- 100% of farmers. When Lisa Beecheler first posed the question, I wondered how it would be addressed, because if it has an answer today, it must be very small, indeed. It's not the way one defines "sustainable" that is significant, as much as the difference between measures of progress and the goal itself. Waffling on the definition tends to confuse both the measurements and the goal. For example, one cannot be doing something sustainable when there is no viable alternative at that time other than depending on non-renewable resources. Soil, fossil fuel, biodiversity all are being steadily reduced. Consumptive use of one or more of these are the resource of all (to my knowledge) present agricultural systems, so none are sustainable. They only differ in matters of degree in the rates of decline they perpetuate in these nonrenewable resources. It's not a matter of being organic, or slash-and-burn, or Green Revolution production, since in some way all depend on nonrenewable resources. Only the recipes of ingredients and activities differ. We have NEVER had a "system" of sustainable agriculture, and today none could rightfully claim that it would last indefinitely. There are multiple constraints. For many reasons today they all are unwitting executioners of the future. None can turn the ship, for reasons ranging from the pervasive influences of money to the immense pressure reducing the carrying capacity of the planet as the demand increases. We must invent the way to become sustainable, if we wish to give a legacy of choices to those that follow us. Sustainable means that you (us, we, society, humankind) make choices that lead to conditions where there are multiple choices. "Sustainability" is not a "state" but a process that can perpetuate itself indefinitely. To avoid the confusion, we need to remember that good decisions require ways of telling how we are increasing options that increase options, etc., and allow us to correct what we're doing in time to avoid diaster (which is a condition without options, the crash). What most of us associate with "sustainable" are, indeed, steps in some way that seem to be in the "right" direction. But, for example, recall that there were ONLY organic farmers before this century, and civilizations fell anyway. There must be more to "sustainable" than this! The eco-, socio-, atmo-, and geo-spheres all are interconnected, and have important functions that we are disrupting so that options are declining. In general, it sometimes seems that we are still racing madly to the crash, and need to expand our navigation to more holistic criteria while we get clear on where it is that we want to go. If you CAN, in principle, answer the question, then the question is not about sustainability. Don't we really want to know about the way decisions are being made, and what their consequences will be? Robert Rodale said sustainability was a question, and I agree. R. H. (Dick) Richardson Office: 512-471-4128 Zoology Dept. Home: 512-476-5131 Univ. of Texas FAX: 512-471-9651 Austin, TX 78712