For fifty years modern North American agriculture has been judged to be the most efficient and successful agriculture the world has ever seen. These judgments were based on three principle measurements:Yield per acre, the number of non-farmers that a single farmer feeds, and the cost of food (measured either by the percentage of disposable income North Americans spend on food compared with other nations, or the low cost per unit of mass producing a specific food, like chicken.)

More recently we have come to recognize that these simplistic measurements are inadequate. MEY clubs helped farmers understand that raw yield data didn't necessarily correspond to money in the bank. Economists began to point out that even though the number of non-farmers a single farmer feeds went from one to three in 1930, to one to 125 today, modern farmers no longer feed the non-farmers by themselves as they did in 1930. Today feeding the 125 non-farmers requires a virtual army of non-farm laborers---everything from truck drivers to fertilizer manufacturers and food distributors. Likewise, the disposable income spent on food is deceptive since it does not include the huge subsidies that are spent on agricultural production (Everything from oil depletion allowances to government farm payments) and more importantly, it does not include the "external costs .. of soil erosion and environmental degradation which are part of modern agriculture. And the low cost of producing chicken is sometimes at the expense of horrific working conditions and food safety.

Furthermore, we have come to recognize that many of the agricultural practices which have contributed to this "successful" agriculture cannot be maintained over the long term. The heavy dependence of this agriculture on off -farm inputs derived from non-renewable resources means that at some point in the not too distant future, high input agriculture will become prohibitively expensive. We have also come to realize that an agriculture that loses five pounds of soil for every pound of corn it produces cannot be sustained. Nor can an agriculture that depletes under ground aquifers be sustained.

These and many other insights have led us to rethink modern agriculture and to look for alternative practices that might prove more sustainable over the long term.

No-till practices, zeroing in on the soil erosion problem, have attempted to make agriculture more sustainable by reducing the loss of one of the natural resources critical to agriculture. Integrated Pest Management and Best Management Practices have attempted to address the problem of agricultural sustainability by using off-farm inputs more judiciously. Organic agriculture switching to nutrient recycling on the farm and breaking pest cycles through crop rotations and the introduction of natural predators, has attempted to make agriculture more sustainable by weaning it from non-renewable resources for fertility and pest control altogether.

In the meantime Wes Jackson reminds us that the problem is not the KIND of agriculture we practice --- the problem is agriculture ITSELF. He suggests that we will never have a sustainable food production system until we develop food systems that are not dependent on the cultivation of annual crops.

All of this has forced us to begin addressing the larger question. Instead of asking how "efficient" or "successful" a particular agriculture practice is, we are now having to ask; What a healthy agriculture would look like? What are the criteria of a healthy agriculture?

As I have struggled with this question it has occurred to me that a healthy agriculture needs to accomplish at least seven goals:

1. Agriculture is healthy when it preserves and regenerates its resource base --- soil and water.

Any agricultural practices which deplete soil and water at rates which exceed the soils capacity to replace its, and the water's ability to replenish itself, are by definition not sustainable. At best, agricultural practices that deplete soil and water are short-run mining operations that do not concern themselves with future food security.

2. Agriculture is healthy when it protects and enhances its environment.

Agricultural practices that degrade the environment in which they are performed will inevitably diminish the ability to continue. Already ranchers in some parts of the United States are finding it difficult to produce livestock because of nitrate poisoning in surface and ground water. Salinization is forcing farmers in some parts of North America to abandon land that once produced substantial agricultural products.

Center pivot irrigation equipment is idly rusting in some fields because ground water has depleted to a point where it can no longer be pumped efficiently.

The natives who originally practiced agriculture on these plains were keenly aware that the environment from which they extracted their food needed to be treated with respect. Pioneers who brought European agricultural methods to these plains also were aware of this need. One of the folk sayings that became an integral part of local folklore expressed it well: "take care of the land and it will take care of you." Apart from such environmental awareness and care, a healthy agriculture is not possible.

3. Agriculture is healthy when it eliminates waste.

A healthy agriculture seeks to utilize everything. Nothing that can be used in agricultural production gets thrown away. An agriculture that confines livestock in huge feed lots where manure is allowed to accumulate without being recycled back to the soil; and corn, (to feed the livestock) is produced with no renewable sources of nitrogen and with practices that cause unprecedented soil erosion, is a sick agriculture --- no matter how profitable it may be on the short term.

4. Agriculture is healthy when it promotes and utilizes diversity.

One of the ills of modern agriculture is its specialization. Nature's system is diverse. When we try to introduce mono-culture into adverse environment it will require unusual effort to maintain the specialization. Daniel Green-McGrath, Research Extension Specialist at Oregon State University has said that "a single species agriculture is a time-bomb, waiting to go off." by the same token, a diverse growing environment is a garden of solutions waiting to be found. Each part of a multifaceted growing system is a potential solution for problems in that system. Thus a crop rotation scheme involving, five or six different types of crops become the solution to most pest and fertility problems.

5. Agriculture is healthy when it strives to achieve stability and security for both farm and farmer.

An agriculture cannot be healthy when neither farm nor farmer have a sense of security. A farmer who's future is constantly threatened by economic demise cannot concentrate on building a healthy agriculture. A farm that is constantly in transition to a still bigger farm, cannot attend to the development of the ecological health of

the land on that farm. Wendell Berry has argued that the only way we can "maintain productivity" is to retain the ecological health of the land. He goes on to observe that the only way to maintain the ecological health of the land is to use the land well, and that the land cannot be used well unless there are people ON the land who know how to use the land well, who have the time to use it well, who are motivated to use it well, and who can afford to use it well. This will never happen in an environment of severe economic uncertainty.

6. Agriculture is healthy when it indefinitely satisfies the planet's need for fiber, for appropriate shelter, and for nutritious, safe, and tasteful food.

Modern agriculture seems to be based on the principle of producing the greatest quantity of bio-mass at the cheapest price. We need to begin to recognize that a healthy agriculture cannot be based purely on maximizing production --- especially not on the short term. We need to begin shifting our goal to MAINTAINIG PRODUCTIVITY on a global basis, rather than MAXIM IZING PRODUCTION on a regional basis. This means, among other things, achieving a balance of population and food production in every bio-region on the planet. Transporting food thousands of' miles to satisfy export goals and cash requirements, when food could be more efficiently produced locally is a sign of an unhealthy global agriculture. The notion that North American farmers should feed the world, and destroy the resource base of their agriculture in the process is not only shortsighted, it is obscene. As numerous thoughtful analysts have pointed out, every bio-region on this planet has the potential to feed itself. Hunger is not a production problem, it is a social and political problem. Witness the fact that when Bangladesh was undergoing its severest famine a few years ago, it was also EXPORTING beans to England to satisfy government cash flow needs.

7. Agriculture is healthy when it fosters the development of vibrant, stable, rural communities --- the "culture" of

agriculture.

We need to recognize that agriculture is a biological, not an industrial system. As a biological system, it is always cite-specific. Management solutions that work on a farm in rural Missouri, will not work in rural Manitoba. This means that most of the management skills required to manage a farm effectively cannot be taught as abstract concepts in classrooms, they have to be learned "on-cite" in the field. This means that the local wisdom for taking care of local land, and managing local bio-system, is retained in local communities. When the local communities disappear, the cultural wisdom disappears with them. The disappearance of rural communities could well be the greatest loss North American agriculture will face. Academic knowledge and laboratory research is extremely important to a thriving agriculture, but it will never be a substitute for local wisdom passed on from generation to generation within rural communities.

Perhaps these seven criteria are not the only or the best criteria for judging a healthy agriculture. But it seems to me that we need to concentrate our energies on developing such criteria and then begin judging various agricultural practices and policies by the extent to which they contribute to the fulfillment of such goals. Farmers can no longer afford to stand inside of a specific set of practices (whether no-till, or BMP'S, or Organic) insisting they are right and everyone else is wrong. Agricultural policy makers can no longer stand inside of a specific set of farm policies, without testing those policies against an agreed upon set of criteria that can move us toward a healthier agriculture. If we fail to set such goals then we will always be off course no matter how successful we may appear. As the wag said, if we have no goal we are likely to hit it.

Once we have agreed on the criteria of a healthy agriculture, then we can encourage a wide variety of practices and policies for achieving the goals implicit in the criteria. That could create a climate of good, friendly competition, and perhaps a variety of ways to achieve the same end. A healthy agriculture is what we need, regardless of the name by which we achieve it.