FAO defines SARD (Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development) as a process which meets the following criteria:

• Ensures that the basic nutritional requirements of present and future generations, qualitatively and quantitatively, are met while providing a number of other agricultural products.
• Provides durable employment, sufficient income, and decent living and working conditions for all those engaged in agricultural production.
• Maintains and, where possible, enhances the productive capacity of the natural resource base as a whole, and the regenerative capacity of renewable resources, without disrupting the functioning of basic ecological cycles and natural balances, destroying the socio-cultural attributes of rural communities, or causing contamination of the environment.
• Reduces the vulnerability of the agricultural sector to adverse natural and socio-economic factors and other risks, and strengthens self-reliance.

(From FAO Trainer’s Manual, Vol. 1, "Sustainability issues in agricultural and rural development policies," 1995)