Agricultural Sustainability : Economic, Environmental and Statistical Considerations

Sustainability has become an important concern for environmentalists, agricultural researchers, farmers, politicians and ordinary voters.

All agree on the importance of ensuring that agricultural systems of production can, in some sense, be sustained, i.e. be operated in such a way that quality of output can be maintained year after year, without degradation of the environment.

There is less agreement, however, on how this concept of sustainability should be interpreted, or precisely defined, let alone measured.

It was against this background of lack of precision in defining the sustainability concept that the Rockefeller Foundation commissioned an international research study on sustainability to exploit the wealth of potential information in established long--term experiments.

Six major centres of long--term experiments were invited to conduct detailed studies of their data and to address the issue of definition and, in particular, to make proposals on how to measure sustainability in quantitative terms. The book is divided into three sections: * Part I considers basic issues of definition and the choice of appropriate economic and statistical methodology* Part II presents the results of the six research studies* Part III draws together the conclusions, addresses the thorny issue of environmental externalities and makes proposals for future research and implementation.

The book has been structured as a comprehensive and unified contribution to this important issue and will be a valuable resource for researchers, professionals and policy makers interested in sustainability.