Thinking Critically about Sustainable Agrifood Systems
Thinking Critically about Sustainable Agrifood Systems
The sustainability revolution in agrifood systems began in the early 1980s, in reaction to environmental and social problems caused by preceding revolutions. Understanding sustainability requires understanding how our knowledge about the world is created, including similarities and differences between the knowledge of farmers and scientists. This supports critical thinking, especially about assumptions. Increasing agrifood sustainability requires three steps. First, defining sustainability, a value-based goal for how we think the world should be, which requires community discussion. Second, choosing indicators of sustainability, as defined, and objectively measuring them to find out how the world is. Third, making and implementing policies to increase sustainability, as defined, checking progress by repeated measurement of indicators, and rethinking our definition in light of new information.
Keywords: sustainability revolution, critical thinking, farmer knowledge, scientist knowledge, assumptions, definition, value-based goal, indicators, measurement, policies
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