Measuring Efficiency Of Abovefarm’S Sustainability Rating System For Organic Farming. A Case Study Of Ten Crop Production Organic Farms In China, East-Asia And Europe.

Summary

"In the last decades a broad number of tools have been developed to assess farms sustainability performance though their application had scarce influence on farmers' and consumers' decision-making toward sustainability. Limitations lay mainly in evaluation tools' efficiency. Moreover, little attention was paid on evaluating organic agriculture and enhancement of best practices. Abovefarm sustainability rating system for organic farming aims at overcoming these limitations. The rating system: (i) translates IFOAM principles of “fairness”, “ecology”, “care” and “health” into sustainability indicators; (ii) measures through thresholds the level of farms' sustainability; (iii) provides an independent and free of charge tool; (iv) promotes best practices by selecting farmers who engage in sustainable practices.  The aim of this study is to design and test Abovefarm rating system for its efficiency, in order to boost organic 3.0 at global level."