Assessing farm sustainability. An application with the Italian FADN sample

As policy makers, taxpayers and consumers are willing to know the actual contribution of farming to natural and social environment, sustainability and sustainable development arose as key issues in public debates. Sustainability is a multifaceted concept that includes environmental, economic and social objectives and policy makers need information to take effective decisions. Analysts should rank decisional units according to sustainability criteria and should offer to policy makers more and more insights on the different points of view behind the three dimensions of sustainability. Within the current FADN database sustainability indicators have been identified. In some cases estimations have been necessary and in some other cases thanks to allocation of costs (crop protection and fertilizers), to the registration of physical information (quantities of fertilizers) and to other details assembled with the Italian methodology (irrigation system, socio-demographic information) indicators have been directly derived. Starting from a multi-criteria matrix a Sustainability Farm Index (SuFI) has been calculated at farm level. The methodology has been applied to the regional FADN sample of Veneto of 2009. The current FADN database has demonstrated to be a valuable source of information to monitor the environmental and social farm assets, beside the economic one. However, additional informative modules seem necessary to integrate the current set of information in order to describe comprehensively the environmental and social aspects of agricultural holdings in the context of the assessment of sustainable development.