I have enjoyed reading the thread. I was glad to see so many people on the
List express the importance of moving towards more sustainable agricultural
practices. It is an important issue. I think the struggle on the list
with defining sustainabiliity is symptomatic of how poorly defined the
category is. I would suggest that rather than dump the category, we need
to define it better. The lack of definition, however, is not for lack of
underlying science. Below is a quote from a recent journal article that
defines the contours of what I believe are the actual problems.
"Although targets and policy tools are now widely used, the chosen targets
often are not biophysically meaningful, or they lack an effective mechanism
for linking to policy action. Furthermore, most existing sustainability
initiatives fail to reflect on foundational issues, and do not adequately
confront potentially uncomfortable ethical questions. Instead, most
sustainability initiatives are firmly situated within the jurisdictional
and political context of the present, where pragmatism reduces the set of
potential actions to a relatively narrow range that is deemed politically
feasible. Often, the resulting short-term responses are only minor
perturbations (positive or negative) to the dominant trajectory of
increasing un-sustainability. The Kyoto Protocol is an example of a
pragmatic, politically mediated compromise that falls far short of what
climate scientists believe is needed to avoid 'dangerous' climate change
with serious consequences for human well being . Although short-term
pragmatism is valuable, small uncoordinated steps, by themselves, are
unlikely ever to lead to sustainability. Political pressure frequently
decouples policy actions from credible sustainability targets, and
sustainability is falsely treated as a relativistic concept. This
decoupling is responsible for an ever-widening gap between what needs to be
done to reach sustainability and what is actually being done".
Fischer, J. et al. 2007. Mind the sustainability gap. TRENDS in Ecology and
Evolution Vol.22 No.12: 621-624
Beekeeping is a big part of a sustainable future. Pollination enables
higher yields among many crops for very little ecological cost
(energetically, materially, in terms of chemical inputs). While most of
our staples are not animal pollinated, the elements of our diet that our
linked to healthy living are largely pollinated... reduced yields from
these crops, or yields that come from more unsustainable inputs, might not
affect out intake of calories, but will most certainly result in a more
impovershed diet than we currently eat (the average American only eats one
fruit serving per day and this comes, by in large, in the form of orange
juice). Current estimates from the USDA suggest that should American eat
the minimum fruit and vegetable servings from the Food Pyramid, there would
need to grow an additional 4.1 million acres of fruit and 8.9 million acres
of vegetables (http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err31/err31.pdf).
Should policy/enterpraneurs move US agriculture in a way that meets this
shortfall, we need to be able to increase colony numbers and maintain them
to contribute to the sustainable production of this currently neglected
part of our diet.
Adony
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