Sustainable agriculture has five simultaneous objectives:
- economic viabilty,
- social acceptability,
- environment-friendly,
- source of high-quality healthy products,
- no threat to future agricultural potential.

These objectives can be assessed through different indicators of environmental impact and at different levels of scale (farm to world).

A better recognition of sustainability in agriculture demands that we consider how to ensure well-balanced and environnement-friendly crop rotations which meet the requirements for feed and food uses and which are adapted to local constraints.
Such rotations should also be economically viable and socially acceptable in each region of production.