While smallholder farming sacrifices direct economic and social progress, its indirect effect on economic and social systems makes it more sustainable than industrial agriculture. This argument, presented in the excerpt from Robert Netting’s book, asks three questions: What is the metric for social progress? What is sustainability? Is evolutionary progress inversely correlated with progress towards sustainability? Netting highlights the cultural evolutionist theory that a society’s agricultural productivity is directly correlated with quality of life. As less human labor is required for food production, societies are allowed to focus on their own social development. Netting’s excerpt prefaces an argument against this idea. Rather, according to Netting, small-scale (or smallholder) farming has a smaller environmental footprint which indirectly leads to social and economic benefits. Netting recognizes that it is difficult for societies to maintain their more sustainable behaviors when the alternative is a more productive, industrial solution. Still, Netting defends his claim that smallholder farming is the more sustainable food system that we, as a global culture, should be working towards. Netting’s ideas are one example of the argument that occurs between culture and nature. Smallholder farming occurs in the area of defining culture within nature. That is, the practice of farming occurs as a cultural necessity (a social construct required for economic vitality). Industrial agriculture, however, is nature defined within culture. Biological productivity is seen as a system, regulated and maintained through industrial processes. Any attempt to define nature, within culture, as Netting claims, is unsustainable.