TY - JOUR AU - McIntyre, Joseph PY - 2010/08/13 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Views from the Food System Frontier: Measuring Agricultural Stewardship: Risks and Rewards JF - Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development JA - J. Agric. Food Syst. Community Dev. VL - 1 IS - 1 SE - Column DO - 10.5304/jafscd.2010.011.005 UR - https://foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/6 SP - 19-22 AB - <p><em>First paragraphs:</em></p><p>As a process facilitator working exclusively on food system issues, I spend a lot of time on the road talking to farmers and other food system actors about sustainability. The two most frequent comments I hear, particularly from producers, are "what the heck does sustainability mean?" and "if we were not sustainable, we would not be here today."</p><p>The dialogue from this point may follow one of several paths. We can try to define sustainability abstractly, and inevitably someone will bring forward a definition that mimics the Brundtland[1] formulation: Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Others may say that sustainability is a set of practices, such as organic or biodynamic farming. Still others suggest that it has an ever-shifting end point, never reached and also never fully defined.</p><p>[1] The Brundtland Commission, more formally the World Commission on Environment and Development, developed the first popularized framework for "sustainable development" in the mid-1980s.</p> ER -