Future of Farming in the Face of Regulation

Connectiveness is a term that gained popularity among individuals interested in how the parts of systems link together. This term has a lot of applicability to our understanding of farming systems, however, we havent considered how to quantify or even define how components link together. We often consider that we are using an agroecological approach to our current problems, however, we have not really defined how the components link together across a watershed scale and the potential impacts of each of these components. The emphasis on nonpoint source pollution in the last 10 years has increased our awareness of connectiveness. At the same time tools are being developed to help us understand these interrelationships.