Abstract
Alternative ‘ecological’ approaches to farming have been developed to address the negative externalities associated with the dominant model of intensive agriculture. Sustainability assessments have seen widespread use in evaluating the effectiveness of these approaches at farm-level, but their application remains limited at the regional level. We aimed to address this gap by combining scenarios and qualitative impact mapping to conduct objective-led regional sustainability assessments (drawing on expert opinion and stakeholder consultation) of ecological farming approaches (conservation agriculture, organic, integrated, and low-input farming) for a diverse set of 16 study areas across 11 European counties. We considered alternative scenarios for high or low, and clustered or dispersed, adoption of an appropriate ecological approach for each study area. Across the range of study areas, all approaches assessed were linked with diverse sustainability gains, demonstrating that their regional sustainability benefits are applicable to many different geographic contexts and farming systems. Sustainability performance was enhanced under scenarios with a high rate, and a clustered distribution (albeit to a lesser extent), of adoption. However, high clustered adoption of ecological farming was not a panacea, still involving some trade-offs between objectives, and ecological approaches were less beneficial for social than for environmental and economic objectives. No single ecological approach consistently performed better or worse than any other: the optimal ecological approach, and the nature and extent of the trade-offs involved, will vary with context, so policy interventions for agricultural sustainability need flexibility to accommodate this regional variation.
Presenters
Peter MatthewsPost Doctoral Fellow - Research Associate, Divsion of Human and Social Sciences, University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Education, Assessment and Policy
KEYWORDS
Sustainability assessment, Regional sustainability, Scenarios; Agriculture; Ecological farming
