Sustainable Ecological Agriculture in China: Bridging the Gap Be ...

stressed natural resource base. Chinese ecological agriculture is a type of production that is likely to be on a smaller scale, less capital intensive, and more labour intensive than such agriculture in other countries. In terms of yield, at present, it tends to be slightly less productive than high-input conventional agriculture in China. The success of ecological agriculture has been achieved by focused labour and management rather than by the use of large amounts of nonrenewable energy. Chinese ecological agriculture is a site-specific manifestation of the application of ecological economics to agricultural practices associated with the country's implementation of a sustainable development strategy (Shi, 2003b). Its rise is suggested as a workable alternative that has the potential to mitigate the negative impacts of modern conventional agriculture and, at the same time, to overcome the limitations of traditional agriculture in meeting the needs of China's growing population.

Research Problems and Contentions

Becoming informed about problems is the necessary first step in the search for solutions. How precisely sustainability principles can be translated into operational practice remains uncertain. Ecological agriculture can be regarded as an attempt to realise sustainability in a dynamic agricultural context. Problems arise in operationalising the concept of sustainable development in agriculture because different frameworks of analysis and different methods of assessment are employed in research and in practice. In many cases, the sustainability debate has not provided any clear indications about how to modify current agricultural development towards sustainable outcomes. One of the main reasons for the existence of the gap between the theory and the practice of agricultural sustainability is the conflict between the need for implementing long-term research (which is particularly important in an ecological-economic integrated context) and the constraints posed by short-term research funding and methodological difficulties (Lockeretz, 2000). The current overall perception of the problem is replete with ambiguities and is too constrained by the disciplines of economics and ecology. Thus, this calls