|
Books > Professional & Technical > Agriculture & farming > Organic farming
This book is based on the assumption that "organic has lost its
way". Paradoxically, it comes at a time when we witness the
continuing of growth in organic food production and markets around
the world. Yet, the book claims that organic has lost sight of its
first or fundamental philosophical principles and ontological
assumptions. The collection offers empirically grounded discussions
that address the principles and fundamental assumptions of organic
farming and marketing practices. The book draws attention to the
core principles of organic and offers different clearly articulated
and well-defined conceptual frameworks that offer new insights into
organic practices. Divided into five parts, the book presents new
perspectives on enduring issues, examines standards and
certification, gives insights into much-discussed and additional
market and consumer issues, and reviews the interplay of organic
and conventional farming. The book concludes with a framework for
rethinking ethics in the organic movement and reflections on the
positioning of organic ethics.
Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at
producing food and energy in a sustainable way for our children.
This discipline addresses current issues such as climate change,
increasing food and fuel prices, starvation, obesity, water
pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control and
biodiversity depletion. Novel solutions are proposed based on
integrated knowledge from agronomy, soil science, molecular
biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, philosophy and
social sciences. As actual society issues are now intertwined,
sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer
world. This book series analyzes current agricultural issues and
proposes alternative solutions, consequently helping all
scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians
wishing to build safe agriculture, energy and food systems for
future generations.
Stakeholders show a growing interest for organic food and farming
(OF&F), which becomes a societal component. Rather than
questioning whether OF&F outperforms conventional agriculture
or not, the main question addressed in this book is how, and in
what conditions, OF&F may be considered as a prototype towards
sustainable agricultures. The book gathers 25 papers introduced in
a first chapter. The first section investigates OF&F production
processes and its capacity to benefit from the systems functioning
to achieve higher self-sufficiency. The second one proposes an
overview of organic performances providing commodities and public
goods. The third one focuses on organics development pathways
within agri-food systems and territories. As well asa strong
theoretical component, this book provides an overview of the new
challenges for research and development. It questions the benefits
as well as knowledge gaps with a particular emphasis on bottlenecks
and lock-in effects at various levels."
|
|