Measuring agricultural sustainability at the farm-level: A pragmatic approach
Measuring agricultural sustainability at the farm-level: A pragmatic approach
复制标题
在农场层面衡量农业可持续性：务实的方法
DOI：
10.5836/ijam/2013-04-04
复制
发表时间：
2013
影响因子：
8.7
通讯作者：
Poppy Frater
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Franks;Poppy Frater
随着生产更多粮食的政治压力越来越大，同时考虑到环境和社会因素，以及科普极端气候和金融不稳定的需要，农业需要变得更具可持续性。为了监测和提高对可持续农业的认识，农民需要更多的工具来说明其商业决策的影响。然而，目前用于监测农业可持续性的工具需要测量很少现成的变量。此外，这些工具在开发和解释时将农民排除在外。本文提出了一个务实的方法来创建一个农场为基础的监测工具。我们建议，农场一级的可持续性指数最初只基于数据，是现成的。虽然这将增加对农民的吸引力，从而提高参与率，但作为衡量可持续性的标准，它最初可能没有什么直接价值。因此，一个“设计-行动-设计”的周期-适应性共同管理的基础-必须采用，让工具的发展。从这一务实的、自下而上的角度出发，随着数据收集系统的改进，可以纳入更多理论驱动的（即自上而下的）具体地点的可持续性变量，以提供一个更全面的工具。本文阐述了所涉及的原则（一）计算一个农场特定的综合可持续发展指数（CSI）的商业农场的基础上现成的数据和（ii）强调需要建立更好的数据收集系统。
With increasing political pressure to produce more food whilst being environmentally and socially considerate, alongside the need to cope with climatic extremes and financial instability, farming needs to become more sustainable. To monitor and improve understanding of sustainable agriculture, farmers will need additional tools to illustrate the impacts of their business decisions. However, current tools to monitor the sustainability of agriculture require measurement of variables that are rarely readily available. Moreover these tools exclude farmers in their development and interpretation. This paper suggests a pragmatic approach to creating a farm-based monitoring tool. We propose that farm-level indices of sustainability are initially based only on data that is readily available. Whilst this would increase its appeal to farmers and therefore participation rates, it may initially have little immediate value as a measure of sustainability. Therefore a ‘design-action-design’ cycle-the basis of adaptive co-management- must be employed to allow the tool to evolve. Starting from this pragmatic, bottom-up perspective, as data collection systems improve, more theoretically driven (i.e. top-down) site-specific variables of sustainability can be included to provide a more comprehensive tool. This paper illustrates the principles involved by (i) calculating a farm-specific composite sustainability index (CSI) for a commercial farm based on readily available data and (ii) emphasising the need to establish better data collection systems.