ABSTRACT
In the earliest surviving texts on European farming, agriculture was interpreted as two connected things, agri and cultura, and food seen as a vital part of the cultures and communities that produced it. A sustainable agriculture making the best of nature and people’s knowledge and collective capacities has been showing increasingly good promise. A more sustainable agriculture seeks to make the best use of nature’s goods and services as functional inputs. Agricultural systems emphasizing the principles are also multi-functional within landscapes and economies. Agricultural systems with high levels of social and human assets are more able to innovate in the face of uncertainty Sustainable agriculture relies more on agro-ecological and organic approaches to food production. Social learning is a vital part of the process of adjustment in sustainable agriculture projects. Most of the sustainable agriculture improvements seen in the past decade have arisen despite existing national policies.
