Environmental indicators for sustainable beef cattle/forage production: Case study for the south Interlake Region of Manitoba

The federal government and the province of Manitoba are incorporating sustainable development and subsets of sustainable development including sustainable agriculture, into its political mandates. To monitor progress towards either sustainable development or agriculture, sustainability indicators are required. A subset of sustainability indicators includes environmental indicators. Environmental indicators are tools that can be used to monitor progress towards environmental sustainability.;The goal of this project has been to determine if it is feasible to use environmental indicators for a specific agriculture practice, beef cattle/forage production. This was accomplished by identifying the environmental issues for this agriculture practice, reviewing available environmental indicators from various literature sources and compiling a list of environmental indicators for the agricultural practice. Data sets were located and researched to determine which could be used for the environmental indicators. Data sets were found for only three environmental indicators in the list Any other available data sets located were not specific enough to be used for environmental indicators for beef cattle/forage production. The data were collected on a land area basis, not a land development basis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).