From the IAASTD, Scientific and Policy Vocabulary of What I Want to Do

Findings: IAASTD Summary for Decision Makers of the Global Report

16. Innovative institutional arrangements are essential to the successful design and adoption of ecologically and socially sustainable agricultural systems.
Sustainable agricultural production is more likely when legal frameworks and forms of association provide secure access to credit, markets, land and water for individuals and communities with modest resources. Creating market-based opportunities for processing and commercializing agricultural products that ensure a fair share of value addition for smallscale producers and rural laborers is critical to meeting development and sustainability goals.

17. Opening national agricultural markets to international competition can offer economic benefits, but can lead to long term negative effects on poverty alleviation, food security and the environment without
basic national institutions and infrastructure being in place.

20. Both public and private sectors can help advance development and sustainability goals.
Increased investments in AKST, particularly if complemented by supporting investments in rural development (for example, infrastructure, telecommunications and processing facilities) can have high economic rates of return and reduce poverty. AKST investments also generate environmental, social, health, and cultural impacts.

22. Achieving sustainability and development goals will involve creating space for diverse voices and perspectives and a multiplicity of scientifically well-founded options, through, for example, the inclusion of social scientists in policy and practice of AKST helps direct and focus public and private research, extension and education on such goals.
Some interpretations have been privileged over others and have helped push formal AKST along certain pathways, to the neglect of other scientifically sound options. Some of the by-passed options originate in traditional knowledge or civil society experience and may be better able to contribute to poverty reduction, social inclusion, equity and generate multifunctional outcomes.

International assessment on Agriculture Knowledge, Science, Technology and Sustainability

This changes everything.

This April, an independent project involving over 400 full-time researchers and 58 countries published a report. The full scope of the report is enormous, but you can view the summary here:
http://www.agassessment.org/docs/SR_Exec_Sum_280508_English.pdf

Some excerpts, which may echo well with what I’ve been saying here. (In fact the same thing that I observed from the farm 3 years ago, and have since dedicated my life to preaching…)