ABSTRACT
The development of sustainable agriculture reflects a growing awareness of the social and environmental problems of agriculture and of the need to seek solutions to these problems in our lifetime. At a US Department of Agriculture Conference on low-input, sustainable agriculture in September 1988, one US Department of Agriculture speaker implied that a concern for environmental matters in agriculture, especially in the so-called less developed countries, is a luxury. Sustainable agriculture have positive impacts on rural communities because it could help arrest the decline of the family farm, which is at the heart of the rural community. The needs and nature of a sustainable agriculture are very different from those of a chemically based agriculture. Legislators have an obligation to ensure that farm and agricultural legislation contribute to a sustainable agriculture that meets the needs of farmers, the communities in which they live, consumers, and the natural environment that supports all life.
