Review of concepts for the evaluation of sustainable agriculture in Germany and comparison of measurement schemes for farm sustainability

Within the EU research project SVAPPAS, a method of sustainability measurement based on principles of financial markets, will be tested wrt sustainability issues in agriculture, and further developed. This analysis is oriented to farm level approach based on FADN data. The study goes in two directions; first, measurement concepts available in German are reviewed, and second, the different methods are applied to a sample of dairy farms selected from the national FADN. The results of DEA, Sustainable Value and economic indicators lead to similar conclusions in most assessments. In contrast to the high correlation between Sustainable Value and DEA, a rather low correlation with the ecological indicators can be observed. Moreover, results of SV and economic indicators are generally contrary to ecological indicators. In each case it seems to be reasonable to use more than one approach for the assessment, to get a more detailed and comprehensive picture of the individual dimensions and issues of sustainability.