Recently, we have developed a framework which signposts the way to sustainable agriculture. It is based on the acceptance that agriculture can only be sustainable if the socio-cultural (human); economic (financial); environmental (natural) and process (social) capital are managed collectively. We also found it appropriate to consider the management of human and natural capital together within the concept of resource stewardship. In developing the framework, there was a realisation that whilst there has been much discussion in modern society about peoples’ rights, there has been very little consideration of their responsibilities. Our framework seeks to redress this imbalance by clarifying the responsibities of all people who make decisions which affect agricultural sustainability. It is our view that sustainable agriculture is likely to be implemented most effectively by adopting the processes of best practice and benchmarking. Benchmarking partnerships are all about learning communities. Successful implementation of our framework is posited on the establishment of numerous such learning communities based around different groups of decision makers.

We suggest that an understanding of how other complex systems, such as the air transport industry, work successfully could provide a model for how the whole framework concept might work in practice. In particular, they can tell us a great deal about how information is generated and transferred between different parts of the system. Successful systems do not rely on each part of the system knowing everything about the other parts - that way leads to information overload and chaos. The paradox is that large organisations, including governments, are increasingly harnessing the escalating power of modern computers to amass information in centralised databases producing complex simulation models. More and more people are recognising the limitations of this approach. It conflicts with the need, in a federation, for people in different parts of the system to be empowered to make their own decisions, and also to have easy access to the best and most relevant information.

There is much that we can learn from each other about sustainable agriculture - and sustainable regions.