Multilevel sustainability assessment of farming systems: a practical approach

Abstract

Sustainability assessment is needed to build sustainable farming systems. A broad range of sustainability concepts, methodologies and applications already exists. They differ in level, focus, orientation, measurement, scale, presentation, etc…. Instead of trying to construct the ideal and complete sustainability assessment tool, we suggest to combine existing methods. A smart combination of methods with different purposes makes sustainability assessment more profound and broadens the possible applications. To illustrate the suggested approach, a combination of the sustainable value approach (SVA) and MOTIFS is presented. SVA is used to support policy makers, while MOTIFS is used to support farmers towards sustainability. Using data of specialised dairy and arable farms in Flanders, the multilevel sustainability assessment is illustrated by applying both SVA and MOTIFS. The combined use widens the insights without losing the particularities of the different approaches. An interesting insight is that the same farm accountancy data can be used to feed different indicator systems with different complementary goals at different levels (such as policy and farm level).