Assessing the environmental sustainability of local agricultural systems: How and why

Abstract This paper focuses on the quantitative assessment, on a local scale, of the environmental sustainability of agricultural activities. To compare the supply and demand of natural resources in a local agricultural system, a methodology based on the ecological footprint approach was adopted. The condition of (strong) sustainability of an agricultural system is established through an ecological balance where the availability of natural capital, expressed in terms of biocapacity (BC), is compared to its demand by agricultural activities, expressed as ecological footprint (EF). The viability of this methodology was tested in the agricultural area of Viterbo municipality (central Italy). The results of this study provide interesting points of departure for further research regarding the possibility of defining an agricultural production system as “sustainable” and of introducing a regional sustainability brand as a key for local development.