Agricultural sustainability: what it is and what it is not

Philosophy can help clarify hidden assumptions in alternative definitions and approaches to sustainability. Current usage reveals two main substantive approaches, resource sufficiency and functional integrity, as well as widespread non-substantive usage intended to promote social action. Although accounting based resource sufficiency approaches have been the main focus in technical approaches, functional integrity approaches may be more transparent with respect to value judgements that inform the notion of sustainable systems. The ‘paradox of sustainability’ arises because substantive, research based approaches to sustainability may be too complex to effectively motivate appropriate social responses. Nevertheless, debate over the meaning of sustainability can stimulate a fuller appreciation of the complex empirical processes and potentially contestable values that are implicated in any attempt to accomplish sustainability in agriculture.