Sustainable Agriculture
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login Sustainability rests on the principle that we must meet the needs of the present without compro
mising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Starving people in poor nations, obesity in rich nations, increasing food prices, on-going cli mate changes, increasing fuel and transportation costs, flaws of the global market, worldwide pesticide pollution, pest adaptation and resistance, loss of soil fertility and organic carbon, soil erosion, decreasing biodiversity, desertification, and so on. Despite unprecedented advances in sciences allowing us to visit planets and disclose subatomic particles, serious terrestrial issues about food show clearly that conventional agriculture
is no longer suited to feeding humans and preserv ing ecosystems. Sustainable agriculture is an alterna tive for solving fundamental and applied issues related to food production in an ecological way [Lal (2008) Agron. Sustain. Dev. 28, 57–64]. While conventional agriculture is driven almost solely by productivity and profit, sustainable agriculture integrates biological, chemical, physical, ecological, economic and social sciences in a comprehensive way to develop new farming practices that are safe and do not degrade our environment. To address current agronomical issues and to promote worldwide discussions and cooperation we implemented sharp changes at the journal Agron
omy for Sustainable Development from 2003 to 2006. Here we report (1) the results of the renovation of the journal and (2) a short overview of current concepts of agronomical research for sustainable agriculture. Considered for a long time as a soft, side science, agronomy is rising fast as a central science because current issues are about food, and humans eat food. This report is the introductory article of the book Sustainable Agriculture, volume 1, published by EDP Sciences and Springer (Lichtfouse et al., 2009, this book).
