Scope and precision of sustainability assessment approaches to food systems

Abstract

ABSTRACT. With sustainability within food systems becoming an increasingly important issue, several approaches that claim to assess the sustainability of farms, farming systems, and supply chains have been developed. Looking more closely at these sustainability impact assessment approaches, we discerned considerable differences between them in terms of scope, the level of assessment, and the precision of indicators used for impact assessment. Our aim was to classify and analyze a range of available sustainability impact assessment approaches with respect to scope and precision. From a total of 35 sustainability assessment approaches, we selected 6 for a detailed comparison. From our analysis, we concluded that there are 3 different types of trade-offs in these approaches: between different kinds of scope, between different indicators for precision and trade-offs, and between the scope and precision. Thus, one-sizefits-all solutions, with respect to tool selection, are rarely feasible. Furthermore, as indicator selection determines the assessment results, different and inconsistent indicators can lead to contradictory assessment results that may not be comparable. To overcome these shortcomings, sustainability impact assessments should include a precise definition of the notion of "sustainability" along with a description of the methodological approach and the indicator sets and should aim for harmonization of indicators and assumptions. Global initiatives such as the Sustainability Assessment in Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA) Guidelines are a helpful step toward shedding light on the differences of these approaches and making the assessment results more comparable.

Key characteristics for tool choice in indicator-based sustainability assessment at farm level

“…The CSFs "attitude of model users toward sustainability" and "organization of discussion sessions" are not related to the type of tool and are therefore excluded from the analysis. Two additional characteristics emerged from the data and have been confirmed by the literature: "output accuracy" or precision of the results (Schader et al 2014) and "tool functions" (de Ridder et al 2007). The addition of these characteristics resulted in an enhanced framework (Table 3) to perform the comparative analysis.…”

“…During tool development, the aims of the tool developers are not always clear or cannot always be fulfilled (Triste et al 2014). Additionally, the tool used in practice can offer different functions, irrespective of the developers' aim during development (Langeveld et al 2007, Schader et al 2014): a tool can provide a platform for communication through describing the sustainability themes, i.e., communication function (De Mey et al 2011); it can promote the exchange of ideas and knowledge, i.e., learning function (Terrier et al 2010, De Mey et al 2011, Gerrard et al 2011, and further induce management responses, i.e., management function (Grenz et al 2009); and it can fulfill monitoring obligations (Wiek and Binder 2005, Grenz et al 2009, Meul et al 2012) for statutory control purposes or for product certification, i.e., monitoring and certification function (Hülsbergen 2003, Rodrigues et al 2010. Furthermore, the methodological steps within tools may contain significant biases toward specific framings of sustainability (Bond and Morrison-Saunders 2011).…”

Framework for assessing the farm relative sustainability: a Lithuanian case study

“…Therefore, the SAFA is a globally applicable guiding framework for the sustainability assessments in the food and agricultural sector. Moreover, Schader et al (2014) proposed to apply the SAFA to assess the analytical tools that are developed for the farm sustainability assessment.…”

When experts disagree: the need to rethink indicator selection for assessing sustainability of agriculture

“…Consensus on which sustainability indicators to include is lacking and contributes to a wide diversity of approaches Bell and Morse 2008;Parris and Kates 2003). This multiplicity can add cost, impair the ability to focus on the most salient sustainability indicators and raise concerns regarding the validity of approaches, usefulness and trust in the concept of sustainability (Hansen 1996;Bockstaller et al 2009;Schader et al 2014). As a solution, several have raised the importance of transparent and well-defined procedures and criteria for selecting individual indicators and balancing indicator sets to develop relevant, trusted, comprehensible and meaningful sustainability assessments (Dale and Beyeler 2001;Bockstaller et al 2009;Niemeijer and de Groot 2008;Lebacq et al 2013).…”

“…These tools vary in their assessment objective, spatial and temporal scope and level of stakeholder involvement (Binder et al 2010;Schader et al 2014). Consensus on which sustainability indicators to include is lacking and contributes to a wide diversity of approaches Bell and Morse 2008;Parris and Kates 2003).…”