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

Abstract

Increasing consumer awareness on sustainability issues has led to the growing adoption of voluntary sustainability standards in agriculture. This study assesses the sustainability performance of typical conventional and certified coffee production systems in Brazil and Ethiopia based on expert judgements. We apply the SMART-Farm Tool, which represents an operationalization of the SAFA (Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems) framework of FAO. Data were collected through expert interviews and uncertainties were estimated using Monte-Carlo simulations. A higher sustainability performance of the certified systems was observed regarding product information (+37%) and transparency (+39%) in Ethiopia. In Brazil, the certified system showed a higher overall sustainability performance compared to the conventional system in the environmental dimension and in some social and governance aspects, e.g., gender equality (+49%) and public health (+36%). Geographical or political conditions and farm type also had a strong influence on the observed sustainability performance. Typical smallholder production systems in Ethiopian coffee production performed comparable in the environmental dimension since all were low-input systems due to economic constraints. The conventional Brazilian system showed a better performance concerning employment relations (+14%) and profitability (+13%), as compared to the certified Brazilian systems, because larger farms were more likely to employ permanent staff and benefit from economies of scale.

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

“…During workshops with farmers to present assessment results, participants questioned the relevance of several corporate governance indicators for family farms. Similar feedback was observed in applications of SMART-Farm in developing countries, where farming is dominated by smallholder non-commercial farms (Ssebunya et al, 2017, 2019; Winter et al, 2020). One option to address this would be to either omit such indicators or adapt them to the size and organizational context of a farm.…”

A new understanding and evaluation of food sustainability in six different food systems in Kenya and Bolivia

“…For this study, we reduced the set of indicators from originally over 70 to 56 (Table 2), using only those indicators that were assessed in all six contexts, indicating their relevance in all these contexts. Third, the rating and aggregation of results by an expert panel can insert bias 59 . We argue that the empirical data combined with expert knowledge of a transdisciplinary team provides a chance for less bias than from a single researcher or disciplinary team, aware that aggregation of a complex data set implies the simplification of information.…”

A holistic sustainability assessment of organic (certified and non-certified) and non-organic smallholder farms in Kenya

“…Similarly, other SAFA-based studies found a poor performance in terms of Accountability and Holistic Management of smallholder farms in developing countries and elsewhere (Landert et al, 2017;Pérez-Lombardini et al, 2021;Schader et al, 2016). A study of noncertified and conventional smallholder coffee farmers in Ethiopia, for example, found that they did not use formal farm monitoring methods (Winter et al, 2020). Poor documentation (e.g.…”