Indicator-based tools are widely used for the assessment of farm sustainability, but analysts still face methodological and conceptual issues, including data availability, the complexity of the concept of sustainability and the heterogeneity of agricultural systems. This study contributes to this debate through the illustration of a procedure for farm sustainability assessment focussed on the case study of the South Milan Agricultural Park, Italy. The application is based on a set of environmental, social and economic indicators retrieved from the literature review.
Organic agriculture has experienced remarkable growth in recent decades as societal interest in environmental protection and healthy eating has increased. Research has shown that relative to conventional agriculture, organic farming is more e cient in its use of non-renewable energy, maintains or improves soil quality, and has less of a detrimental e ect on water quality and biodiversity. Studies have had more mixed findings, however, when examining the impact of organic farming on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change.
Researchers at the University of Queensland have worked on research projects in the PNG Highlands since 2005. These projects were, and are, applied research to manage soil fertility in sweetpotato-based cropping systems in the Highlands. They were funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. Our key collaborator was PNG’s National Agricultural Research Institute. Although the projects were in the field of Soil Science, specifically soil fertility management, our approach has always been multidisciplinary.
The Water Resources Department, Government of Maharashtra, responsible for building infrastructure and delivering water to farmers and other users, has so far created irrigation potential of about 5.3. million hectares and the current utilization is about 76%. About 5000 Water User Associations (WUAs) have been established to manage the water supply within their designated areas. However, the water use efficiency and productivity is adversely impacting the overall water security of the state.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) financed the second Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resource Management Project (CHARMP2), in areas where poverty is most severe among indigenous peoples in the highlands of the Cordillera Region in northern Philippines. The aim is to reduce poverty and improve the livelihoods of indigenous peoples living in farming communities in the mountainous project area. The indigenous peoples consist of many tribes whose main economic activity is agriculture.
The creation of Competitive Research Grants (CRGs) is globally recognized as an institutional innovation for improving the effectiveness of agricultural research. Unlike block grants for research, CRGs are expected to bring in many top-quality proposals from a wide range of actors, selecting the best out of them and thus getting more value for money.
In India, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) are considered as the most preferred institutional mechanism for enhancing productivity and income of farmers. This is based on the resounding success of a few farmer collectives that have aggregated their produce to realise better incomes. However, when efforts were made to scale up this interesting model across the country, several challenges emerged.
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) proposes environmental policies developed around action-based conservation measures supported by agri-environment schemes (AES). High Nature Value (HNV) farming represents a combination of low-intensity and mosaic practices mostly developed in agricultural marginalized rural areas which sustain rich biodiversity. Being threatened by intensification and abandonment, such farming practices were supported in the last CAP periods by targeted AES.
The process of adopting innovation, especially with regard to precision farming (PF), is inherently complex and social, and influenced by producers, change agents, social norms and organizational pressure. An empirical analysis was conducted among Italian farmers to measure the drivers and clarify “bottlenecks” in the adoption of agricultural innovation. The purpose of this study was to analyze the socio-structural and complexity factors that affect the probability to adopt innovations and the determinants that drive an individual’s decisions.
In recent decades, the confluence of different global and domestic drivers has led to progressive and unpredictable changes in the functioning and structure of agri-food markets worldwide.