Agriculture's search for sustainability and profitability

Excerpt

ARE sustainable systems necessarily profitable? Are profitable systems necessarily sustainable? The answers to these questions depend on whether one talks about the long or short run or about an individual farm or society in general.

Sustainability, by definition, is a long-term concept. The term sustainability, as used here, refers to farming systems that are capable of maintaining their productivity and utility indefinitely. Sustainable systems must be resource-conserving, environmentally compatible, socially supportive, and commercially competitive.

Systems that fail to conserve the resource base eventually lose their ability to produce. Systems that fail to protect the environment eventually destroy their reason for existence. Farming systems that fail to provide an adequate food supply at reasonable costs lose their utility to society. And finally, systems that are not commercially competitive will not generate the profits that are necessary for economic survival.

A system must be profitable in the long run or it cannot be sustained. A system must be sustainable or it cannot be profitable in the long run. Some may quibble about the philosophical concept of long run and at what point in time sustainability and profitability converge. But most would agree that in the long run there is no …