This concise text offers an overview of the key issues in sustainable food production for all
readers interested in the ecology and environmental impact of agriculture. It details the
ecological foundations of farming and food systems showing how knowledge from the natural and
social sciences can be used to create sustainable alternatives to the industrial production
methods used today. Beginning with a discussion of the role of agriculture in human development
the primer examines how twentieth-century farming methods are environmentally and socially
unsustainable contributing to global change and perpetuating inequalities. The authors explain
the principles of environmental sustainability and explore how these principles can be put into
practice in agrifood systems. They emphasize the importance of human well-being and insist on
the centrality of social and environmental equity and justice.
