ASSESSING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF AGRICULTURE AT THE PLANNING STAGE

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge in defining sustaina ble agriculture within the broader sphere of sustainable development W e conclude that agricultural sustainability encompasses biophysical, e conomic and social factors operating at the field, farm, watershed, re gional and national scales. The immediate challenge is to determine wh at are sustainable agricultural uses before they are implemented-at th e planning stage. The final section outlines a framework within which current land evaluation, environmental impact and strategic environmen tal assessment approaches to land use planning may be extended, and ar gues that these approaches must include, from the beginning, sustainab ility criteria. The framework for integrated sustainability assessment encompasses a mosaic of factors and hierarchy of scales important to agricultural sustainability. The keys to this framework are characteri zing sustainability indicator groups and identifying 'threats' to sust ainable practice. In this way, the framework can be seen as a guide fo r unsustainability assessment using indicators. (C) 1998 Academic Pres s Limited.