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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Definitions of sustainable agriculture

I was part of an interesting and productive meeting Monday dealing with the tobacco side of my research and extension program where the conversation turned to definitions of sustainable agriculture.  The consensus was that there is not consensus among growers, regulators, and the public as to what sustainable agriculture really means. Being a visual thinker, this conversation inspired me to plug the definitions used by some of the sustainable agriculture resources I trust into a Wordle

The most frequently used terms in definitions of sustainable agriculture are represented, and their size is proportionate to their frequency.  While the words pest and pests appear, albeit relatively infrequently, pesticide is absent but was frequently mentioned in our conversation Monday.  Labor and economic sustainability are also absent from the sources included above and were key components in our conversation.  What did appear as important were environmental concepts, such as water and soil.  I used definitions from the following resources to create this word cloud if you are interested in repeated my results or adding different sources:
UC Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition 
The Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program (SARE)
USDA - Sustainable Agriculture Information
Ecological Agriculture Projects - McGill University

While bouncing around the site, I also created a word cloud for my twenty six most recent blog posts.  It's pretty clear what's been on my mind lately!



2 comments:

farmland investments said...

Very interesting. I do sometimes get confused as to the difference between organic farming and sustainable farming.

farmland investments said...

Very interesting. I do sometimes get confused as to the difference between organic farming and sustainable farming.

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