Agroecosystem sustainability: a system simulation model approach

The sustainability of agroecosystems depends on the maintenance of the economic, biological and physical components that make up the system. The high level of integration of these components implies that any evaluation of agroecosystem sustainability must consider the dynamics of multiple components. In recent years a number of system simulation models have been developed to examine different aspects of agroecosystem sustainability. This paper presents a brief description of a simulation model developed to evaluate agroecosystem changes using a number of indicators. Agroecosystem sustainability is then evaluated using simulation results for a series of agricultural production systems in Saskatchewan, Canada. The results indicate that the economic and environmental sustainability of the system is dependent on the biophysical constraints which determine the management options that are technically, agronomically and economically viable. The simulations revealed that system sustainability did not uniformly increase or decrease according to the indicators used.