Chapter 2. M. J. Jones. 1993. Sustainable agriculture: an explanation of a concept. Pages 30-47. In: Derek J. Chadwick, Joan Marsh (editors). 1993. Crop Protection and Sustainable Agriculture. Ciba Foundation Symposium 177. Chichester, UK. John Wiley Interscience Publication, 285 pages.

Keywords: sustainability and world agriculture, sustainability in developing countries, external resources, internal resources, the three Rs: renewability, reversibility, resilience, scale and the cultivation frontier, people and policies, synthesis, ethos and ethics, rice yield decline, traditional farming systems, impact of technological changes in crop production on soil fertility and the water table in India, arthropod diversity in wetland lowland rice fields, common found are 400-600 species over a three-month season on about 10 t of standing rice biomass, this is the same order of magnitude as in the Amazon rainforest, species diversity