Tony Simons, the Director-General of the World Agroforestry Centre, is leading a plenary discussion panel at the Business for Environment Global Congress 2013 in New Delhi today.

Recognising that agriculture is the largest employer in the world, the largest single landuse in the world, the largest threat to natural ecosystems, and the human enterprise most vulnerable to climate change shocks -  without sustainable agriculture,  we will not have sustainable societies nor a sustainable planet.

He is posing questions such as:
What will sustainable agriculture look like in 10 years’ time? For companies? For the farmer? For the rural landscape?
2Can we derive composite metrics for sustainable agriculture so that it can be monitored and managed? In essence can we agree on some aligned goals for farmers, communities, business, government and consumers.
Win-win-win situations for economic, social and environmental goals are wonderful but where we cannot achieve it, how do we analyse tradeoffs? For instance, given that it takes 200 years to make 1 cm of topsoil, how many cubic metres  clean water supply equates to a tonne of soil conserved?
 
In general, the state of health of agricultural land in developing countries is as worrying as the health of their peoples. The World Bank’s latest estimates show that if the current trend continues reversing land degradation and managing land sustainably will cost several hundreds of billions of dollars by 2030. To boost rural economies, we must embrace a new approach that acknowledges the interconnected nature of our biophysical world, as well as its links with the social and political realms. This is known as the landscape approach. A key feature of the landscape approach is that it integrates land and soil , agriculture, forests, people, animals and water rather than treating them separately.

To tackle these perennial problems we need perennial solutions. And nothing is better than trees at sequestering carbon, bringing water from depth, adding organic matter to the soil, providing an ecological framework for diversity – not to mention the livelihood and market diversification options available. The challenge is to raise the awareness, recognition, appreciation and investment in trees in agricultural landscapes. This will be best attained with greater evidence of profit, calorific, social and environmental benefits of tree-based systems which the panel will present.

To achieve long-term and impactful change with tree based enterprises we need three things: (1) establish efficient, effective and achievable Agricultural Sustainability Goals, Metrics and Standards;  (2) focus policies and efforts on small-holders within groups in the supply chain; and (3) provide better infrastructure and responsible investment incentives to change and to cope.