Sustainable intensification

Abstract

The sustainable intensification of agriculture (SI) is promoted as a potential solution to the need to advance global food security while also reducing the negative impacts of agriculture. SI is conceptualised as a third way between highly industrialised forms of agriculture and those approaches promoted by the alternative agriculture movement. However, it has attracted significant criticism from certain groups and pressing questions remain as to how to put SI into practice. For example, around the relative importance of sustainability and intensification within the term, and around the implications of SI for different farming systems. Nevertheless, there is some agreement that it is likely to be context-specific, and that putting it into practice will require trade-offs between its various dimensions. If SI is to remain a viable concept and a possible direction for agricultural development, some of the questions posed here need to be addressed in more concrete and socially acceptable terms.