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Deconstructing criteria and assessment tools to build agri-sustainability indicators and support farmers’ decision-making process

Abstract:

In the review of academic literature, numerous papers present either a list of indicator criteria or partially revised sustainability assessment tools of agri-food systems. However, neither a complete analysis and discussion about the criteria utilised by evaluators nor a compared examination and subsequent frameworks categorization have been fully developed by researchers. This study aims to fill this twofold gap by investigating the main issues related to the choice of a tool for the sustainability assessment of an agri-system. This task is conducted in three steps: firstly, we analyse the criteria an indicator should match to be included in an evaluation; secondly, we categorise 15 of the most important agriculture sustainability frameworks to discuss effectiveness in evaluating sustainability for each category, finally, we compare the categories and emphasise differences to highlight the possible application of each framework and hence guide the practitioner in the framework selection process. Our analysis identifies the complementarity between bottom-up and top-down approach and the impossibility of identifying a priori the best framework, although a combination of both approaches could prove to be a valuable, alternative option.