The social pillar of sustainability: a quantitative approach at the farm level

Gaviglio, Anna; Bertocchi, Mattia; Marescotti, Maria Elena; Demartini, Eugenio; Pirani, Alberto

doi:10.1186/s40100-016-0059-4

Cited by 41 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The construction of the Global Sustainability Index (GSI) has been retained useful as to evaluate the sustainability performance of AFN from a systemic perspective. Indeed, AFN have often been evaluated for their contribution to social reconnection of consumers and producers and for their capacity to be a lever for local development (Gaviglio et al, 2016;Blasi et al, 2015); in other cases, studies have been conducted on some specific agro-food products or supply chain (Galli et al, 2015); finally, other researches about the correlation between local food chains and sustainability have been conducted (Brunori et al, 2016), but quantitative results are missing. Through the GSI, our aim is to assess the performances of three pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social), independently of the product or supply chain.…”

Section: The Global Sustainability Index and The Assessment Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing Alternative Food Networks sustainability in Italy: a proposal for an assessment framework

et al. 2019

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The aim of the paper is to evaluate the sustainability of Alternative Food Networks in Italy through the construction of a composite indicator, the Global Sustainability Index. The index is able to provide decision-makers with indications on synergies and tradeoffs between the different dimensions of sustainability. The methodological approach is of the quantitative type, and the information used in the study comes from a direct survey that involved 226 producers. The results show that the environmental indicators that take the greatest value are those concerning problems of great impact on the actual debate such as the loss of genetic diversity and the use of packaging for agro-food products. Regarding economic sustainability, the indicator with the highest value is related to the ability of the Alternative Food Networks to diversify sales channels. This evidence confirms the producers' increasing difficulty to adopt mono-directional strategies, favoring a differentiation of markets and, consequently, a reduction of economic risks. In terms of social sustainability, two interesting evidences emerge: the considerable importance attributed to the information of the features of the products and the increase in work involvement following participation in the Alternative Food Networks.

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Section: The Global Sustainability Index and The Assessment Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing Alternative Food Networks sustainability in Italy: a proposal for an assessment framework

et al. 2019

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“…For this reason, SAFA turns out to be a useful benchmark paradigm for highlighting the differences between the different approaches and for making the assessment results more comparable [20]. A comparison of several applications for the assessment of sustainability (IDEA-Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles or Farm Sustainability Indicators; RISE-Response-Inducing Sustainability Evaluation model; SAFA; SOSTAR -analysis of farm technical efficiency and impacts on environmental and economic sustainability, MOTIFS-Monitoring Tool for Integrated Farm Sustainability and 4Agro) at farms in Northern Italy has made it possible to study the choice of indicators, the availability of data and the involvement of stakeholders, as well as to add more evaluation scales for agriculture (the environment, society, the economy and governance) [21][22][23].…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Relationships and Sustainability Performance in Organic Agriculture in the United Arab Emirates and Sicily (Italy)

et al. 2019

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Climate change, recurrent economic and financial crises and food security issues are forcing society to look at the increasingly widespread use of “sustainable” production practices. These are often translated into innovations for businesses that are not always easily achievable other than through specific investments. This work sets out to assess the sustainability performance of organic farms, which represent a sustainable production model in terms of values, standards, practices and knowledge on the ground. The research was carried out in two geographical contexts (the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Sicily, Italy) which have certain environmental and socio-economic issues in common, particularly in productive sectors representative of organic agriculture. This was done with the help of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA, in the rest of the text) framework and social network analysis to study the sustainability performance of organic farms within non-structured local production systems in the form of formal enterprise networks that, on the contrary, operate with a recognized and common aim. The results demonstrate both their attainment of excellence and the existence of criticalities, thus, identifying routes to possible improvement.

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“…Despite the growing recognition of the role of agriculture in safeguarding the social heritage of territories, their culture and traditions, the assessment of social sustainability has received less attention than that of environmental and economic sustainability [50][51][52]. This may relate to the fact that the perception of social issues is heterogeneous and causes a lack of conceptual clarity [13].…”

Section: Social Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this framework, the functional and aesthetic roles of rural buildings (Indicator 20) and the farm landscape (Indicator 21) have been included into the social pillar because of positive or negative social externalities for the rural areas [51].…”

Section: Social Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The park is located on the Po plain (Northern Italy) and involves around 40,000 hectares of the peri-urban area of the city of Milan. Although most of the farms have an intensive production system, they are characterised by a wide range of land, livestock and economic dimensions [51]. The most representative crops are maize, rice and grassland, while the main livestock are cattle, poultry and pigs [54].…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Tool for the Sustainability Assessment of Farms: Selection, Adaptation and Use of Indicators for an Italian Case Study

2017

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Indicator-based tools are widely used for the assessment of farm sustainability, but analysts still face methodological and conceptual issues, including data availability, the complexity of the concept of sustainability and the heterogeneity of agricultural systems. This study contributes to this debate through the illustration of a procedure for farm sustainability assessment focussed on the case study of the South Milan Agricultural Park, Italy. The application is based on a set of environmental, social and economic indicators retrieved from the literature review. The framework is based on three main steps: (i) Data collection mainly through interviews with farmers and institutions; (ii) data elaboration through an aggregative structure; and (iii) score analysis. The latter step includes a descriptive analysis that allows a comparison among farms or groups of farms and a principal components analysis that helps to confirm the dimensions in which indicators were previously included (components). Results derived from the sampled farms show that the framework can provide easy-to-read results useful at different levels. The study highlighted the procedures for the framework construction that is compatible with the region's context and objectives, using an analytical approach that aims at the use of balanced features of availability and reliability of data.

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The social pillar of sustainability: a quantitative approach at the farm level

Cited by 41 publications

References 43 publications

Analyzing Alternative Food Networks sustainability in Italy: a proposal for an assessment framework

Analyzing Alternative Food Networks sustainability in Italy: a proposal for an assessment framework

Analysis of Relationships and Sustainability Performance in Organic Agriculture in the United Arab Emirates and Sicily (Italy)

A Tool for the Sustainability Assessment of Farms: Selection, Adaptation and Use of Indicators for an Italian Case Study

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