Abstract
The objectives of this concluding chapter are: (i) to revisit with readers the long-held basic conceptual framework for sustainable agriculture and nutrient cycling; (ii) to address whether animal agriculture can have a fundamental and essential role in that framework in the future; (iii) to emphasize particularly the essentiality of one key natural resource - water for sustainability - and to raise the question as to whether animal agriculture must change significantly its water use if it is to be a significant component of a future sustainable agriculture; and (iv) to encourage all of us to 'go back to basics' by placing animal agriculture in the context of a continuum of different local holistic, sustainable mixed plant-animal systems that effectively recycle nutrients and energy, as influenced by local setting and available and implementable technologies, however simple or sophisticated. The chapter concludes by encouraging students, scientists, animal farmers, all agriculturalists, communities and societies and thus policy makers, in both developing and more developed countries to embrace the beginning of the formative transformation and continuation to sustainable animal agriculture for the mid-21st century.