Agricultural Sustainability: A Review of Concepts and Methods

Abstract

This paper presents a methodological framework for the systematic literature review of agricultural sustainability studies. The framework synthesizes all the available literature review criteria and introduces a two-level analysis facilitating systematization, data mining, and methodology analysis. The framework was implemented for the systematic literature review of 38 crop agricultural sustainability assessment studies at farm-level for the last decade. The investigation of the methodologies used is of particular importance since there are no standards or norms for the sustainability assessment of farming practices. The chronological analysis revealed that the scientific community’s interest in agricultural sustainability is increasing in the last three years. The most used methods include indicator-based tools, frameworks, and indexes, followed by multicriteria methods. In the reviewed studies, stakeholder participation is proved crucial in the determination of the level of sustainability. It should also be mentioned that combinational use of methodologies is often observed, thus a clear distinction of methodologies is not always possible.

From Laboratory to Proximal Sensing Spectroscopy for Soil Organic Carbon Estimation—A Review

“…In order to have sustainable agricultural systems, economic viability for both farmers and society should be considered, but environmental costs also need to be taken into account, avoiding the implementation of practices that could lead to irreversible soil degradation [2]. Sustainable land use management can be achieved by maintaining and enhancing ecosystem services that include environmental, physical, and socioeconomic aspects [3,4]. The consequences of soil degradation have been recognized by the scientific community, but it was not until 1987 that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) made an agreement with the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) for the execution of the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation (GLASOD) project that produced a world map of human-induced soil degradation [5].…”

Assessing Sustainability Performance at the Farm Level: Examples from Greek Agricultural Systems

“…Sustainability has become a high priority, both in scientific research and in policy agendas [1]. Despite the existence of many studies examining particular dimensions, the need for an integrated assessment of sustainability at the farm level has been widely recognized in scholarly research [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. This realization is a result of the sustainability concerns of citizens, as well as frequent policy changes, which create new information needs for all sustainability dimensions at the farm scale [10,11].…”

Assessing Sustainability Performance at the Farm Level: Examples from Greek Agricultural Systems

“…Sustainability has become a high priority, both in scientific research and in policy agendas [1]. Despite the existence of many studies examining particular dimensions, the need for an integrated assessment of sustainability at the farm level has been widely recognized in scholarly research [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. This realization is a result of the sustainability concerns of citizens, as well as frequent policy changes, which create new information needs for all sustainability dimensions at the farm scale [10,11].…”

“…The most frequently used methods include tools, frameworks, and indices based on indicators. These are followed by multi-criteria methods, including the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) [14][15][16][17][18]9]. However, the above task is hampered by the complexity of the concept of sustainability and the heterogeneity of agricultural systems [19], as well as the limited availability of data, which could possibly allow the calculation of meaningful and relevant indicators [20].…”

“…Besides the lack of data at the farm level, recent research has pointed out the need to broaden the scope and complement wellestablished monitoring tools, such as farm accountancy data networks (FADN) [10,20] . Also, any effort for the assessment of sustainability involves various controversial issues, including the process of computing composite indicators, which encompass much information from multiple indices [6,9,11].…”