IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v23y2006i4p427-438.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainable agriculture and free market economics: Finding common ground in Adam Smith

Author

Listed:
  • Harvey James

Abstract

There are two competing approaches to sustainability in agriculture. One stresses a strict economic approach in which market forces should guide the activities of agricultural producers. The other advocates the need to balance economic with environmental and social objectives, even to the point of reducing profitability. The writings of the eighteenth century moral philosopher Adam Smith could bridge the debate. Smith certainly promoted profit-seeking, private property, and free market exchange consistent with the strict economic perspective. However, his writings are also consistent with many aspects of sustainable agriculture. For example, Smith argued that people ought to exercise restraint in their pursuit of self-interest, and he believed in balancing economic with environmental and social considerations. If both sides of the debate more fully regard the work of Adam Smith, then proponents of the strict economic perspective might be more appreciative of the concerns raised within the sustainable agriculture community, while advocates of sustainability might be more effective in achieving the objective of a sustainable agriculture. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Suggested Citation

  • Harvey James, 2006. "Sustainable agriculture and free market economics: Finding common ground in Adam Smith," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 23(4), pages 427-438, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:23:y:2006:i:4:p:427-438
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-006-9020-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-006-9020-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-006-9020-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Johnson, D Gale, 1997. "Agriculture and the Wealth of Nations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 1-12, May.
    2. Daniel W. Bromley, 2005. "The poverty of sustainability: rescuing economics from platitudes," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 32(s1), pages 201-210, January.
    3. Patricia Allen & Martin Kovach, 2000. "The capitalist composition of organic: The potential of markets in fulfilling the promise of organic agriculture," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 17(3), pages 221-232, September.
    4. Klaas Calker & Paul Berentsen & Gerard Giesen & Ruud Huirne, 2005. "Identifying and ranking attributes that determine sustainability in Dutch dairy farming," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 22(1), pages 53-63, March.
    5. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Judith Janker, 2020. "Moral conflicts, premises and the social dimension of agricultural sustainability," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 97-111, March.
    2. Harvey James, 2008. "From the editor," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 25(1), pages 1-2, January.
    3. Hong Li & Weiwei Zhang & Xiao Xiao & Fei Lun & Yifu Sun & Na Sun, 2023. "Temporal and Spatial Changes of Agriculture Green Development in Beijing’s Ecological Conservation Developing Areas from 2006 to 2016," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-20, December.
    4. Michael Chappell & Liliana LaValle, 2011. "Food security and biodiversity: can we have both? An agroecological analysis," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(1), pages 3-26, February.
    5. Ryan Gunderson, 2014. "Problems with the defetishization thesis: ethical consumerism, alternative food systems, and commodity fetishism," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(1), pages 109-117, March.
    6. Sarah Velten & Julia Leventon & Nicolas Jager & Jens Newig, 2015. "What Is Sustainable Agriculture? A Systematic Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-33, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James, Harvey S., Jr., 2005. "For a Sustainable Agriculture, We Need More Adam Smith, Not Less," Working Papers 26047, University of Missouri Columbia, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    2. Terrence S. Veeman, 2008. "Development, Productivity, and Sustaining Natural Capital," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 56(1), pages 13-25, March.
    3. Amanda Green & David Martin & Gracie Ghartey-Tagoe, 2020. "Is the College Farm Sustainable? A Case Study from Davidson College," Working Papers 20-06, Davidson College, Department of Economics.
    4. CHEN, Helen S.Y., 2020. "Designing Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains," OSF Preprints m82ar, Center for Open Science.
    5. Denise Ravet, 2011. "Lean production: the link between supply chain and sustainable development in an international environment," Post-Print hal-00691666, HAL.
    6. Mara Del Baldo, 2012. "Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in Italian SMEs: the experience of some “spirited businesses”," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 16(1), pages 1-36, February.
    7. Michael Howes & Liana Wortley & Ruth Potts & Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes & Silvia Serrao-Neumann & Julie Davidson & Timothy Smith & Patrick Nunn, 2017. "Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-17, January.
    8. Parnphumeesup, Piya & Kerr, Sandy A., 2011. "Stakeholder preferences towards the sustainable development of CDM projects: Lessons from biomass (rice husk) CDM project in Thailand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3591-3601, June.
    9. Chin-Shan Lu & Kuo-Chung Shang & Chi-Chang Lin, 2016. "Examining sustainability performance at ports: port managers’ perspectives on developing sustainable supply chains," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(8), pages 909-927, November.
    10. Kebede, Yohannes, 1993. "The Limits to Common Resource Management: The Bypassed Commons or Commons without Tragedy," MPRA Paper 662, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 May 1993.
    11. John Stanley & Janet Stanley, 2023. "Improving Appraisal Methodology for Land Use Transport Measures to Reduce Risk of Social Exclusion," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-18, August.
    12. Nora Mzavanadze, 2009. "Building A Framework For National Sustainable Development Assessment And Application For Lithuania: Sustainability In Transition," Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(01), pages 97-130.
    13. Pishchulov, Grigory & Trautrims, Alexander & Chesney, Thomas & Gold, Stefan & Schwab, Leila, 2019. "The Voting Analytic Hierarchy Process revisited: A revised method with application to sustainable supplier selection," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 166-179.
    14. Isin Ceti̇n, 2017. "Accounting Requirements And Records On Bank Subscribed Capital Compliance With European Directives," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1, pages 52-68, February.
    15. Jean-Michel Sahuta & Sandrine Boulerne & Medhi Mili & Frédéric Teulon, 2014. "What Relation Exists Between Corporate Social Responsibility (Csr) And Longevity Of Firms?," Working Papers 2014-248, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    16. Alba Rocio Gutierrez Garzon & Pete Bettinger & Jacek Siry & Bin Mei & Jesse Abrams, 2019. "The Terms Foresters and Planners in the United States Use to Infer Sustainability in Forest Management Plans: A Survey Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-20, December.
    17. Shehu Folaranmi Gbolahan Yusuf & Oluwabunmi Oluwaseun Popoola & Lindokhule Gwala & Thinandavha Nesengani, 2021. "Promoting University–Community Alliances in the Experiential Learning Activities of Agricultural Extension Postgraduate Students at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-18, September.
    18. Filipa Correia & Philipp Erfruth & Julie Bryhn, 2018. "The 2030 Agenda: The roadmap to GlobALLizaton," Working Papers 156, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    19. Choy Yee Keong, 2005. "Sustainable Development—An Institutional Enclave (with Special Reference to the Bakun Dam–Induced Development Strategy in Malaysia)," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 951-971, December.
    20. Anthony Bennett, 1998. "Sustainable public/private partnerships for public service delivery," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 22(3), pages 193-199, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:23:y:2006:i:4:p:427-438. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.