Defining Sustainability

Defining Sustainability

At this week's Colorado Ag Classic — the conference's theme has been Defining Sustainability. It seems as if only recently the term has become a buzzword for consumers. JBS Head of Corporate Affairs Cameron Bruett says that for many farmers or ranchers — it has always been an important aspect of agriculture.

Bruett: "So you have people not of farm, not of agriculture coming in and increasingly defining the term of sustainability. If you went back the 1900s and you were to ask a farm operator does he care about the land? He would say yes. Does he care about water quality — well that's going to impact his productivity and profitability. Does he care about his place in the community? He was probably one of the social pillars of that community — active in the local church. So as we've gone into this discussion on global resource consumption and as we are putting so much pressure on the planet you have a lot of end users and consumers of resources now asking questions of those who produce the products. But that doesn't mean those that produce the products weren't thinking about those things years and years ago. So sustainability has always been woven into the fabric of agriculture, simply because if you abuse the land you won't be able to utilize that land to produce the products that will earn you a living tomorrow. So it has always been a part of the fabric of agriculture, it is now we are having more urban consumers asking questions — rightly so and that is fine — and that term sustainability is how they are getting at their questions."

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