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Group 4: consultation-based assessment (n = 26), 3.5. IFAD, UNED (2013) Smallholders, food security and the environment. de Olde et al. Grenz J, Thalmann C, Schoch M, et al (2012) RISE (response inducing sustainability evaluation), version 2.0. 2018), and aggregation of indicators and valuation systems (Gasparatos and Scolobig 2012; Sltmo et al. Contact and Potential drivers of biodiversity were also highlighted, such as involvement of farmers in a biodiversity conservation plan and farmers knowledge of biodiversity conservation, which was not actually measured in the paper that cited it. For instance, a governance or institutional sphere is sometimes introduced following the Four Spheres perspective from the formalised Tetrahedral Model (OConnor 2006). 2018; Acosta-Alba et al. Aggregating the impact across all categories allows for a holistic view of farm sustainability. 5 key principles of sustainability for food and agriculture. Social sustainability can be approached by widening the perspective of tools to capture personal characteristics of farmers, including experience, identity, family and human capital or human conditions that are drivers of farm viability, as used, e.g., in the Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SIAF) (Musumba et al. We selected peer-reviewed papers that assess the sustainability of farming based on empirical observations. Integrated farm sustainability assessment for the environmental FSA - Farm Sustainability Assessment - Certifications 2018; Kelly et al. 2014). 2011). saves time & resources as using just one reference tool means not having to complete multiple assessments for multiple customers. For the farm topic, the word farm* (with an asterisk) including potentially farming, farmers and farms was used. We performed AHC and applied the Ward criteria to select the typology maximising the inter-group variability and minimising the intragroup variability. 2016). Environment-oriented tools currently lack indicators that reveal the social perspective on sustainability, as pointed for LCA by van der Werf et al. Yes. (2019), Talukder et al. Biol Conserv 141:24172431. 2020). UNAIDS Monitoring and EvaluationFundamentals, Geneva, 100 p., https://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/sub_landing/files/8_2-Intro-to-IndicatorsFMEF_2.pdf, last consulted on 08/10/2020, United Nations (2007) Indicators of Sustainable Development: guidelines and methodologies. BASF avails of own ISO-certified methodology to perform these calculations. Although aggregation of indicators is used extensively, there is a spirited debate over the conceptual and methodological parameters employed (Cherchye et al. For more information on cookies and how you can disable them please view our cookie policy. Many tools have been proposed by the research community to assess farm sustainability in order to support farmers in agricultural management or policy makers by informing them about the anticipated effects of policy implementation ex-ante or to assess their consequences after implementation ex-post. Description A farm sustainability assessment can illuminate challenges (e.g. Growing a sustainable, healthy and resilient agricultural sector whilst creating strong and secure supply chains. How can using FSA help to deliver measurable impact on the ground? Building the regenerative capacity of agriculture through a global, farmer-centred, industry-led initiative. Google Scholar, Felice VD, Mancinelli R, Proulx R, Campiglia E (2012) A multivariate analysis for evaluating the environmental and economical aspects of agroecosystem sustainability in central Italy. Measured in kg NMVOC equivalent, Resource use (minerals and metals): depletion of non-renewable reserves in the Earths crust, driven by extraction of raw materials for the production of, e.g., mineral fertilizer and crop protection products. Impacts were the consequences of the change of state. Introduction. Their descriptions of the diversity of tools differ in terms of (i) the characteristics of frameworks for assessment and their categorisation, (ii) the choice of sustainability themes to target and (iii) the diversity of indicators used. 41, 19 (2021). CAB Rev Perspect Agricult Vet Sci Nutrit Nat Res 2. https://doi.org/10.1079/PAVSNNR20072057, Benot-Norris C, Vickery-Niederman G, Valdivia S, Franze J, Traverso M, Ciroth A, Mazijn B (2011) Introducing the UNEP/SETAC methodological sheets for subcategories of social LCA. The models are built using data from farm surveys on farm structure, activities, cropping system characteristics and prices, and test the impact of innovations on farm sustainability to serve as policy advice (Florin et al. The rationale for sustainability assessment is that end users want to know the final impacts of farming systems on society and the planet. Why should I consider using it?Instead of having to assess and verify multiple farm sustainability practices, or benchmark existing schemes, you now for the first time ever have one tool that can do this, saving time and resources. J Clean Prod 112:28332850. 2020). 1). Its a free, multi-purpose reference tool that you can use to benchmark your own company code, and/or third party certification schemes and even country/region specific legislation. In most tools of this group, data treatment is still needed, so feedback cannot be provided directly to farmers for a specific case. French, FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FSA is about creating a common, harmonized language and encouraging the voluntary sharing of information about sustainable practices up and down the supply chain, to promote enhanced collaboration and improved practices between all parties. While a great deal of attention is given to the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability, social sustainability assessment often focuses on the quality of life of farmers and the . 2016), i.e. 2020). 2013; Gerten et al. 4). We only targeted studies that performed a sustainability assessment at farm level. PubMedGoogle Scholar. Four examples are shown in Table 1. 2016). 2020). Crucially, it can capture the trade-offs across different kinds of environmental impact as well as that between economy and environment implied by certain practices. Economic sustainability is estimated from the production of goods and services, often represented by farm income. In: Methodology sheets, third edn. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if If you are looking for contact information for one of our global offices, please visit the link below. The nation state and the problem of selecting and weighting indices as tools for measuring progress towards sustainability. 3). 2007). New York On-Farm Research Partnership - Cornell University Most indicators addressing the impact of farm practices on biodiversity were pressure and state indicators of various types. policy advice), advancing operational development of sustainability assessment tools (i.e. 3A). 2011), Life Cycle Costing (Dwaikat and Ali 2018) or other similar methods were not used in any of the papers reviewed in the present analysis. 2020 Belhouchette H, Blanco M, Wery J, Flichman G (2012) Sustainability of irrigated farming systems in a Tunisian region: a recursive stochastic programming analysis. Adam WM (2006) The future of sustainability: re-thinking environment and development in the twenty-first century. 2016). These projects have received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements No. A review. As complexity increases in farm assessment, indicators providing insights into farming system functioning need to be adapted to the level of complexity of the tool and function (Coteur et al. Such themes are of particular relevance when assessing the ability of a farming system to cope with climate and market disturbances (Tittonell 2014). high productivity). Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) platform https://saiplatform.org/fsa/). Measured in mol H+ ions equivalent, Marine eutrophication: development of an anoxic layer in marine ecosystems due to dead plant biomass, resulting mainly from nitrate leaching and runoff driven by nitrogen fertilization. 2012), or practice-based indicators, such as use of mulching (Moore et al. It questions governance by simple indicators of, e.g., compliance of the farm management plans with regulations or landowner independence. The Sustainably Grown standard is also benchmarked to the Global Social Compliance Programme, recognized by IDH SIFAV, and recognized by food companies under their responsible sourcing programs. The sustainability of agriculture is questioned due to major negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Indicating Bronze, Silver or Gold performance levels. However, Coteur et al. Improve livelihoods and foster inclusive economic growth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2012.02.016, Benayas J, Martins A, Nicolau J, Schulz J (2007) Abandonment of agricultural land: an overview of drivers and consequences. Sociol Rural 57:378395, Smetschka B, Gaube V (2020) Co-creating formalized models: participatory modelling as method and process in transdisciplinary research and its impact potentials. rank, distance to target, Z-score, max-min, proportionate methods), weighting and aggregation (e.g. Top-down tools generally lack emphasis on the local context. We applied filters to discard papers that did not use tools (e.g. (PDF) Sustainability assessment of farms using - ResearchGate No time limitation was applied in the search. Once all the dimensions and themes were listed for each paper, we performed frequency analysis to assess how many times each sustainability theme appeared under a given dimension. An Eco-Efficiency Portfolio of crop production practices is compared by plotting economic and environmentalAgBalancestudyresults against each other. The search was done using the TS field, which allows searches for different topics in title, abstract and keywords (Eq. Apart from the potential savings in time and resources, does FSA deliver any other benefits? formats) co-exist, including calculators, protocols and guidelines with differences in scope of the sustainability assessment, indicators, models and input requirements (Denef et al. How does it work in practice? Silver: Sustainable farming practices recognized by leading companies. This type of grounded perspective is not applied in any of the tools found in the literature. Expertise is direct assessment of farm sustainability by a stakeholder, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2011.03.002, Gmez-Limn JA, Sanchez-Fernandez G (2010) Empirical evaluation of agricultural sustainability using composite indicators. The studies in this group typically employ a sustainability framework from the literature and implement it without any contribution from stakeholders in terms of definition of indicators or sustainability themes targeted. Several reviews have addressed this variation in themes for specific farming systems, such as livestock production systems (van der Linden et al. SAI Farm Sustainability Assessment Program | SGS Canada We manually grouped the approaches based on the number of dimensions they targeted and the characteristics of these dimensions. (2018) and Jacobi et al. In order to get verified under FSA you need to register with SAI Platform and then mandate a verification body such as Ecocert. Participation (group 5) opens up issues, offers descriptive insights into local complexity (Veisi et al. What is FSA? Measured in potential global species loss per ha, A unique comparison of the above environmental impacts between each other offered in AgBalance analysis, based on the PEF13 recommended weighting and aggregation scheme. 652654 and No. Some indicators assessing gender equality could potentially be sought at farm level to capture the effective participation of women, not only in farming activities, but also in operational, strategic decisions related to these activities, asset management or cash access. The current version of FSA (FSA 2.0) is being used by companies and farmers in 24 countries across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. Journals & By continuing you agree to the Hence, low environmental sustainability is not pertinent in the economic sustainability rating. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. The results of these analyses are converted into a 1-10 scale-based rating, ranging from low to very high risk and visualized accordingly. For contracted clients of Certifications only. FSA is designed to improve social, environmental, economic and general farm management practices. Tools differ and insight is lacking about how they match with farmers' needs. Major improvements to agricultural systems are possible with more sustainable farming practices and innovations, especially at farm level. It demonstrates sustainability in farming and is based on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). # Your name: # Name of tool: # Why do you think this tool is relevant? (2015) adopted an embedded sustainability view, with human embedded into community and community into society. Ecol Indic 114:106298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106298, dErrico M, Romano D, Pietrelli R (2018) Household resilience to food insecurity: evidence from Tanzania and Uganda. The increasing complexity and insights into farming systems in groups 1, 3 and 5 can be located in the Complexity framework proposed by Coteur et al. Knowing a farm's nutrient mass balance (NMB) is one step towards improving our understanding of nutrient movement onto, within, and away from the farm. We found that the diversity of themes was higher for economic and social dimensions, despite fewer themes being addressed on average in each tool, which shows less consensus on the themes required to address these two dimensions compared with the environmental dimension. https://doi.org/10.7896/j.1625. Environ Impact Assess Rev 69:7081. This group gathers studies where stakeholders are actively engaged in selection of indicators. The tools use an average level of complexity of indicators, with some combinations of variables and mostly indicators from the literature. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0308-521X(97)00022-X, Dantsis T, Douma C, Giourga C, Loumou A, Polychronaki EA (2010) A methodological approach to assess and compare the sustainability level of agricultural plant production systems. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-015-0305-2, Skoufias E, Rabassa M, Olivieri S (2011) The poverty impacts of climate change: a review of the evidence, Sltmo E, Fischer K, Rs E (2017) The framing of sustainability in sustainability assessment frameworks for agriculture. This process involves scoring against 112 questions, as well as a consistency check by an SAI Platform-approved independent expert. Access everything through our exclusive online portal full of knowledge, learning and guidance materials. helps to reduce the burden of having to assess and verify multiple farm practices using different schemes and codes. in household or farm surveys, on-farm measurements of parameters such as soil carbon and expert opinions on the value of systems. This could be complemented with tools from group 2, where farm models could be used with farmers to see the effects of implementation of alternative farm practices and create the conditions to help farmers change their practices. 2016). Sustain Sci Pract Polic 8:314. FSA is not about introducing more standards or pushing any company to abandon what is working for them. This paper examines whether and how existing SATs focus on the farmer's strategic decision-making. Promote your food company or farms sustainability progress through verification under the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) program. We defined indicators as the most disaggregated variable used in a tool for assessing sustainability in the hierarchy of variables (de Olde et al. The agricultural sector faces global sustainability challenges, including overuse of agro-chemicals, rising greenhouse gas emissions, degraded soils, simplified landscapes, poor working conditions, waning profitability and loss of livelihoods. In group 5 Active engagement of stakeholders based assessment, tools rely on expertise, and particular attention should be given to the choice of experts and level of expertise required. 2014). Environ Impact Assess Rev 60:1623. Environ Impact Assess Rev 30:7181. J Environ Manag 98:119126. Worldwide, the sustainability of farming is questioned in terms of its social, economic and environmental aspects (Pretty 2018). 2010; de Mey et al. For example, the tree tomato sector has a relatively low environmental and high economic performance, suggesting an economic-environmental trade-off. Building the regenerative capacity of agriculture through a global, farmer-centred, industry-led initiative. SCS Sustainably Grown has been successfully benchmarked to the FSA standard, earning Silver Tier recognition. Keep up to date with the work of SAI Platform via our newsletter or social media. Data collection refers to how data were collected for the assessment at farm level, e.g. Learn more. dimensions, themes, sub-themes and indicators. One study on different translations of sustainability has been made by de Olde et al. For each paper, we listed the dimensions targeted as economic, social, environmental, agricultural productivity and institutional. Life cycle thinking yields a robust assessment mechanism to monitor sustainability performance. We described each of the 106 studies used for tool description with categorical variables using the framework proposed by Binder et al. natural patches), connectivity with natural land uses and higher-scale landscape diversity around the farm were mentioned. Using diverse scientific methodologies, the inserted data are then recalculated into environmental, economic, and social impacts click on the icons in the infographic below to view the different impact categories. Social sustainability is approached as the rural function of farming. 2010). Before aggregation, normalisation takes place, using one of several different techniques with their advantages and drawbacks. What are the key guarantees of FSA? Environmental assessment report No.6. What types of indicators are currently being used to assess the sustainability of farms? Nature Sustain 3:419425. use of Proportion of studies reviewed (n = 96) that used each of the seven framings (A. to G.) of sustainability at farm scale identified here based on the type (e.g. Concretely, this can be done with an indicator, such as yield of the main product. J Clean Prod 189:709717. Other typologies of sustainability assessment tools emphasise the importance of aggregation as a discriminating criterion (Gasparatos and Scolobig 2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-012-0405-z, Janssen S, van Ittersum MK (2007) Assessing farm innovations and responses to policies: a review of bio-economic farm models. Procedure for indicator selection describes how the list of indicators for valuation of farm system sustainability was drawn up. The use of the themes Contribution to society and Higher contribution to society shows that this interrelation has been formalised by splitting the assessment of farms into an auto-centred vision of the sustainability of the system, where farm is a closed system, and a vision that is referred to as the contribution to sustainable development, where farm interacts with a larger system (Alkan Olsson et al. Eur J Agron 7:261270. This website uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. Complexity of indicator appraises the complexity of indicator calculation from low to medium and high complexity. FAO. Multiple measurement tools such as field monitoring, field observation or self-recording by farmers are implemented for long periods ranging from several weeks to months (Dalsgaard and Oficial 1997) or multiple years (Pretty et al. The tools in group 3 Survey and indicator based assessment of tools are quick, and thus particularly suitable for rapid diagnosis of sustainability, and they can integrate different types of indicators, namely pressure or impacts. This limits the number of farms that can be monitored in terms of sustainability and requires some models to represent the system functioning. In these tools, indicators are of low complexity, and some models could eventually increase this complexity to provide more insights into the state and potential impacts of the farming systems. Kansas State University, Kansas, USA, Muthuprakash SMK, Damani O (2019) Design of Farm Assessment Index (FAI) for a holistic comparison of farming practices: case of organic and conventional farming systems from two Indian states. The following specific research questions were considered: How is sustainability assessment conducted at farm level? Bringing stakeholders together to accelerate the sustainability of beef production. 2010). When it comes to resilience, as external drivers such as climate change or market volatility become stronger, adding related themes will become more important to capture the resilience of a system, its viability and its robustness. One of the most used is farm income, a state variable of the potential viability of the farm, which was assessed directly by some papers in a very qualitative manner by asking experts whether the farm had a good level of income or not. How long does an FSA audit take from start to finish?The timeframe for completion of the audit depends on the size and complexity of your operation. Technical report No 25. The tools reviewed in this paper combine many different types of indicators, e.g. Sustain Dev 16:271281. Trials were evaluated using the climate change impact category (PEF 3.0) of AgBalance.