Research needs for sustainable agriculture

Excerpt

SUSTAINABLE agriculture is extremely difficult to define. Each person has their own perspective on its definition and may prefer such terms as reduced-input, regenerative, or alternative agriculture to describe our ideas. The difficulty arises from the fact that we are defining a value or mindset rather than a prescription or specified set of practices to follow. Therefore, on a higher level, people may be talking about the same concept, although their methods of approaching this concept are different. Sustainable agriculture means different things to different people.

Many farmers have definite ideas on what needs to be done to make agriculture more sustainable and how to make reduced-input farming methods more productive and profitable. However, because of the diversity inherent in agriculture and because farmers have no unified voice, their ideas on the direction agriculture should take and what is needed to get these ideas implemented often is not considered. On the other hand, researchers at land grant institutions conduct research encouraged by their academic disciplines. Research is often shaped by the monies they can attract and particularly by the guidelines inherent in private grants and state or federally funded projects. Direct input into research programs from farmers has …