Combined farm sustainability assessments: how are agro‐ecological practices captured by different assessment tools?

Summary

This study explores practice-validated strategies for agro-ecological transitions in 15 case studies across Europe. Each reflects a certain point of transition towards agro-ecological farming systems (AEFS). We characterized the status quo of these systems by applying three decision support tools (DST). They provide information on the environmental, economic and social performance of current AEFS and allow to capture agro-ecological practices. The tools applied were COMPAS, an economic performance assessment tool, Cool Farm Tool (CFT), a greenhouse gas inventory, water footprint and biodiversity assessment tool, and SMART, a multidimensional sustainability tool. Results show that farms are highly diverse across Europe, but overall agro-ecological farms tend to enhance biodiversity and water quality, for instance due to a reduced use of chemical-synthetic pesticides and mineral fertiliser. The economic performance of agro-ecological farming however is heterogeneous and no clear patterns are visible. Furthermore, aligning three tools from different disciplines provided insights for the future development and joint application of the tools. A central aspect is that the alignment requires harmonisation, simplifications and assumptions with regard to the input data of the tools.