The SWCS view

Excerpt

SUSTAINABILITY is a buzzword these days. We talk of sustainable forests, sustainable soils, sustainable agriculture, sustainable development-sustainable this and that. In reality, sustainability is not a new concept. Conservation pioneers from George Perkins Marsh to Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold alluded to the concept in their writings, as did the founders of SWCS when they wrote in our mission statement that we would exist “to emphasize the interdependence of natural resources and thereby to educate people so they can use and enjoy these resources forever.”

But sustainability remains a buzzword. The question is how constructive a buzzword it proves to be.

Much time and effort has been spent in the agricultural conservation community over the past two or three years arguing about semantics. Which term better describes the concept of sustainability in an agricultural context? Is it simply “sustainable,” or “low-input,” or “low-input sustainable”? Or perhaps “alternative,” or “regenerative,” even “organic”?

SWCS contributed to this semantic wrangling a year ago in planning its national conference, “The Promise of Low-Input Agriculture: A Search for Sustainability and Profitability,” that was held in …