The term "sustainability" is thrown around with great abandon these days, but it’s worth taking a look at what the word means. To sustain something means to keep it going. Sustaining a relationship with a friend requires effort to keep it flourishing. It requires strategies to make sure the friendship doesn’t fall apart such as communicating, helping, being there for them and so forth. To sustain a volunteer endeavor requires time and commitment so that you get better and better at whatever the effort is, whether it is advocating for children, aiding folks in times of crisis or simply showing up at a school to help children to read. All this effort, time and maybe money help to “sustain” the endeavor.
The same philosophy holds true for agriculture and farming. To sustain a farm, or to sustain a form of agriculture, certain strategies have to be in place to promote a long life. What we do now makes a difference for the future. Literature from the University of California’s Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education Program states that “Sustainability rests on the principle that we must meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” That pretty much says it all about sustainability.
Conventional agricultural practices do not do this. They fail to improve the land. Traditional agriculture basically uses up the land, almost like strip mining. Adding synthetic chemical fertilizers to the soil, for instance, will not build the soil for the future. At some point, that soil will have given all that it has to give to the crop; it will have been rendered literally lifeless. If the soil is not replenished with nutrients, air and moisture, the web of life within the soil, the “soil web,” cannot function.
It is not enough to do the right thing for today; we must do the right thing for our children, their friends, their friend’s friends and the generations that come after.
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