Accounting for uncertainty in multi-criteria sustainability assessments at the farm level: Improving the robustness of the SMART-Farm Tool

Representative Farm-Based Sustainability Assessment of the Organic Sector in Switzerland Using the SMART-Farm Tool

“…Thus, weights are specific to the interaction of indicator and sub-theme. Indicator weights were developed in an international Delphi process involving over 60 experts from different scientific backgrounds (Schader et al, 2019). SMART-Farm has user-friendly software and data base storage on a central server.…”

“…In order to identify key indicators and related management practices, we used an indicator selection process based on (i) high inherent importance for the SAFA theme ("importance weights") and (ii) a high ability to explain variability in the data ("variance weights"). The importance weights are fixed in SMART and based on a Delphi process with over 60 experts in the field of agricultural sustainability (Schader et al, 2019). The variance weights were derived through Principal Component Analysis (PCA), which is a commonly applied method of dimensional reduction.…”

“…A second set of "importance weights" were taken from the expert judgements in the SMART-Farm Tool. These importance weights, and the anonymized primary data underpinning them, are described in Schader et al (2019). These SAFA subtheme weights were translated into theme weights by summing them up and Z-normalizing them.…”

Evaluating the Sustainability Performance of Typical Conventional and Certified Coffee Production Systems in Brazil and Ethiopia Based on Expert Judgements

“…Each indicator has an assigned weight according to its importance for the subtheme. The weights were defined by a panel of 67 experts from 21 countries using a Delphi process (Schader et al, 2019). Most indicators are relevant for several subthemes with varying importance.…”

“…It also takes account of both primary production at farm level as well as upstream and downstream value chain (such as purchased inputs and marketing channels) into account (Schader et al, 2016). The method has been applied to assess sustainability of individual farms in both high and low-income countries (Schader et al, 2016(Schader et al, , 2019, including coffee production under different VSS in Uganda (Ssebunya et al, 2019). Based on this aforementioned study, certification improves subtheme goal achievement in Uganda through an increased group organization and collective capacities.…”