Cropping Policy & Farming Systems: Integrity & Intensity in International Perspective

摘要

A range of criteria determine the cropping policy which farmers pursue in practice, only some of which actually limit what is possible. The purposes of this paper are to explore:-1. trends affecting cropping policy and farming systems, 2. conflicts between intensity and integrity, and 3. reintegration of farming systems as the challenging way forward. Integrity means wholeness, soundness, uprightness and honesty; it refers to ethical qualities. Intensity in agriculture has been quantitatively defined- and usually associated with the quest for increased production with intensive input use justified as 'a legitimate means to a necessary end'. It is the contention of this paper that without the qualitative criterion of integrity as the guiding principle of a farming system, intensity itself is ultimately unsustainable (Fig.l). Integration is the more quantifiable expression of the basis for integrity in cropping systems, in that a greater need for integration implies a range of diverse considerationsto be satisfied simultaneously and requires the setting of the vital but narrower concerns of productivity and profitability in a suitably balanced context. Obviously, it is possible for cropping systems to become too complex for clear and careful management but recent history is otherwise and many have become too simplified. Greater intensity can be achieved by an injection of a package of higher off-farm inputs (agrochemicals and fertilisers) to a simplified cropping system - even to monoculture. However, it is here argued that integration of a more diverse farming system allows for greater intensity to be achieved with lower off-farm inputs and thus with more integrity.