The inter-linked matrix of operative factors contributing for the integrity of agro- ecology is indicated in Figure 1. Development in agricultural landscapes is becoming more pluralistic as policy planners, farmers, environmentalists, conservationists and consumers have variable perceptions on the sustain-ability. These perceptions and priorities range from eco-logical, agro-technological and socio-economic dimensions. Thus, increasing the limits of acceptability of sustainability indices in agro-ecology must assume constructive terms, which defines collective participation, compromise, learning , conflict resolution and sustained interactions.The emerging concepts highlight the importance of joint learning, co- evolution and network reciprocity .
Arguably, sustainable agricultural process such as co-evolution and negotiation to bring in the element of sustainability can-not be achieved without strong leadership at local level. Global environmental change has the potential to ex-acerbate the ecological and societal impacts on agro- biodiversity . In many regions, land conversion forces declining populations towards the edges of their species range, ebb flow table where they become increasingly vulnerable to collapse if exposed to further human impact and climate change . The combination of irreversible species loss and positive feedbacks between biodiversity changes and ecosystem processes are likely to cause non- linear cost increases to society in the future, particularly when thresholds of ecosystem resilience exceeds . Climate change presents yet another challenge of in-creased habitat alterations affecting both food and non- food crops composition at landscape to regional scale. Agro-ecological system is already in the mode of rapid change leading to species range shifts and changes in plant diversity leading to lesser indigenous traditional plant species .
Further, the impact of climate change will have differential effects on the species through the adversities of deficient hydroogical regimes, high temperature, and variation in length of growing season and increased frequency of extreme weather.However, the preparedness requires evolving adaptive strategies to change the cropping patterns, change the farm operation timing, use of traditional crop varieties, improve water use efficiency, improve soil fertility, flexible institutional and governmental policies to suite diverse farming systems . Likewise, agro-biodiversity hotspots must receive increased attention to conserve and safeguard the species of local origin . Thus, the preparedness for the projected climate change requires building social capital at farm level. Further social capital building must be directed to understand the use of traditional varieties at farm level to landscape scale, species composition of contiguous/fragmented ecosystems, biodiversity value and spread of ecosystem services , degree of resilience of farms and identify potential alternative livelihood sup-port systems. Most of the traditional farming systems and practices may exhibit high resilience to the impact of climate change. Modern agriculture systems are categorized as destructive to ecosystem services due to intensive management practices. Further, agricultural systems may reach the point of collapse under climate change scenarios where the conventional agriculture has eroded much of species diversity of the buffer ecosystems and their services. There is need for integrating multiple scale analysis to include variability of current and projected climate, seasonal change impacts, risk proofing mechanisms, alternate land use plans to understand the vulnerability and sustenance of farm productivity .
Sustainability indices analysis of farms at landscape scale requires long period data set, which explains the temporal scale responses of the agro-ecological functions. Some of the climate induced changes cannot be measured directly in short time scale but long-term data sets allow more accurate vulnerability and/or resilience analysis. Any farm level analysis of impact of climate change require several individual studies focusing on various farming practices to provide evidence for multiple responses of the given farming systems at landscape to regional scale to apply sustainability indices to analyze resilience scenarios. However, several of factor that contribute for resilient farming systems need critical attention and profiling at landscape scale. Further, it calls for identifying the possible confounding socio-economic factors controlling responses due to technological advancement . Developmental research approach of PAR based analysis of sustainability indices at farm level merits attention to alleviate the climate induced changes to agricultural landscapes. Research literature on analysis of sustainability at farm level is increasing; however there is need for synthesis of the data to design a framework for long-term monitoring of the evolving farms.