SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE and FARMING DEFINED
Key principles for sustainable agriculture
farming and food
- Produce safe, healthy
products in response to market demands, and ensure that all consumers have
access to nutritious food, and to accurate information about food products.
- Support the viability
and diversity of rural and urban economies and communities.
- Enable viable livelihoods
to be made from sustainable land management, both through the market and through
payments for public benefits.
- Respect and operate
within the biological limits of natural resources (especially soil, water
and biodiversity).
- Achieve consistently
high standards of environmental performance by reducing energy consumption
and by minimising resource inputs, and use renewable energy wherever possible.
- Ensure a safe and hygienic
working environment and high social welfare and training for all employees
involved in the food chain.
- Achieve consistently
high standards of animal health and welfare.
- Sustain the resource
available for growing food and supplying other public benefits over time,
except where alternative land uses are essential to meet other needs of society.
This definition is taken
from
'The Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food: Facing the Future', published
by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in December 2002.
