Browsing by Subject "Advisory service"

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Measurement of sustainability at farm-level : stakeholders perceptions and indicators of the social dimension
(2020) Herrera Sabillon, Beatriz Soledad; Knierim, Andrea
While there is a consensus between researchers, decision makers and consumers that an operationalization of the concept of sustainability is necessary, there exist huge disagreements on how to transform the multidimensional concept of sustainability into usable metrics. Due to the multiple actors involved, diverse objectives and complex interactions, the selection of metrics to be monitored is expected to be science-based, but also relevant to the main concerns of the stakeholders. This dissertation address these gaps investigating stakeholders’ arguments about the suitability of a set of sustainability indicators in an accountancy agricultural information system for policy evaluation. The research is framed in the FP7 EU-Project Farm Level Indicators for New Topics in Policy Evaluation (FLINT). The thesis pursues two objectives: i)to elicit stakeholders’ perceptions about the adoption of sustainability indicators into an established farm accountancy data system and ii)to contribute to assess the usefulness of collecting indicators of social sustainability at farm-level. The first objective is reached by exploring the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) stakeholders’ perceptions on feasibility and usefulness of a set of sustainability indicators. Using discussion groups and semi-structured interviews in nine European countries, we collected arguments about the measurement of sustainability at farm level. Participant stakeholders identified that the request of sustainability information of the farm is already taking place under simultaneous, embedded and sometimes overlapping requirements from regulations, markets or research agents. We found that stakeholders have diverging perceptions toward the value of that information, especially for those indicators not expected to be used for farm-level decision making. For the second objective, two empirical studies were conducted using an integrated data set of FADN and FLINT project in a sample of 1100 FADN farms distributed in nine countries. In the first study we explored the linkage between the use of advisory services by farm managers and the economic, environmental and social performance of farms. We identified three clusters of farms that have a different sustainability performance and that relate differently to advisory services. In the three groups of farms, the number of contacts with advisory services is positively correlated with the adoption of innovations, the number of information sources and the adoption of farm risk management measures. We failed to find linear relationship between advisory services and environmental and social sustainability. The second study investigated the influence of farm-level factors in farmers’ satisfaction with farming and its relationship with the level of satisfaction they have with their overall quality of life. We propose a path model using a Structural Equation Model-Partial Least Squares approach, testing the validity and reliability of a farmers’ work satisfaction construct and determining on how far the farm variables are related with it. Results suggest that while it is valid and reliable to measure work satisfaction as a construct, the farm level data that is currently available explains farmers’ satisfaction with their own standard and values only partially. Therefore a metric that measures those values should be further developed and tested. This doctoral dissertation contributes to the identification and prioritization of standardized indicators of farm-level sustainability. Two main learnings can be implied from the findings. The first one is that ontological differences between the agents that are involved in the functioning and evolvement of an information system can be identified (but not solved) applying inter and transdisciplinary research methods. The second one is that standardized indicators of social sustainability are desirable, feasible and useful to be collected and integrated in the same data sets with economic and environmental indicators. That said, due to the complexity of the relationship between sustainability dimensions, the value of standardization of indicators is limited by how are they going to be used.