What does Sustainable Development mean?
It is one of these key words, that come up all the time, but it does not mean the same for everybody. I found one definition that I would like to share with you:
The word "sustain", from the Latin sustinere (sus-, from below and tenere, to hold), to keep in existence or maintain, implies long-term support or permanence. As it pertains to agriculture, sustainable describes farming systems that are "capable of maintaining their productivity and usefulness to society indefinitely. Such systems... must be resource-conserving, socially supportive, commercially competitive, and environmentally sound." [John Ikerd, as quoted by Richard Duesterhaus in "Sustainability's Promise," Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (Jan.-Feb. 1990) 45(1): p.4. NAL Call # 56.8 J822] at
⇗Alternative Farming Systems Information Center web site
Sustainable Agriculture seeks to identify methods to help all producers fabricate an adequate and safe food supply that can thrive thorough the next millennium. Sustainable Agriculture integrates all elements of farm management: "an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will, over the long term make the most efficient use of nonrenewable and on-farm resources, namly pesticides, fertilizers, wastes, energy, and their economic impact.
The implementation of these principles has to take local conditions into consideration. In poor rural areas, a farmer is first and foremost interested in producing food for himself and his family. This is called substistence farming. Any surplus is sold on the market. Usually cash is scarce, infrastructure poor and most labour is done manually. Any change towards a more market-oriented production has to be considered carefully. These are the principle questions that have to be taken into consideration:
- Can the farmer cope with the additional labour caused by a more intensified production?
- Can the farmer finance the additional input needed for an intensified production?
- Is there an access to markets and does the surplus production fetch reasonalbe prices?
- What happens to unsold products?
- etc.
This site hopes to provide information about livestock based sustainable agriculture farming systems. This page provides a number of useful links for development workers, experts in the field and extension officers abroadon the following subjects:
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Livestock based Sustainable Development
FAO & UTA
MEKARN · Research Cooperation For Livestock-Based Sustainable Farming Systems In The Lower Mekong Basin
UTA · University of Tropical Agriculture Foundation - Cambodia, Colombia, Venezuela
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Biogas · Methane Generation from Livestock Wastes
EERE · U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
FAO
Boxer-Infodienst.de regenerative Energien
GATE · German Appropriate Technology Exchange
Umweltlexikon-Online.de
Multipurpose Trees · Feed resorce · Soil Conservation · Nitrogen-Fixation
CIPAV · Livestock Research for Rural Development · The international journal for research into sustainable developing world agriculture
FACT · Forest, Farm, and Community Tree Network
Indiaagronet Agricultural · Technologies
Livestock · an agricultural Alternative · Extension material
The Mississippi State University Extension Service
The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
Oregon State University, Corvallis
Penn State University
- ⇗Agricultural Alternatives Factsheets · Aquaculture, Beekeeping, Poultry, Exotic Livestock & Birds, Game At this page you can find fact sheets on animal production, especially Earthworm Production,Dairy Goats,Meat Goats and Rabbit Production in Pdf-format.
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Myself
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