Concept and Metrics of Agricultural Diversification

This chapter presents some comparative analysis on agricultural diversification at the national and individual enterprise levels illustrating that although a country or region may have optimum diversification it may not translate into optimum diversification at the enterprise level to the disadvantage of farmers causing the national diversification to be unsustainable. This finding may strengthen the justification for an expanded model at the enterprise level to include integration of various aspects of production, such as crops, livestock, aquaculture, and soil and livestock feed production. The remaining chapters will identify and describe the various aspects and characteristics of the farm model from a practical perspective of an individual farm enterprise utilizing the model and demonstrating how to optimize farm waste to approach a zero waste scenario so that it can be instructive for various levels of uptake, including the individual farm enterprise level.