Published December 8, 2022 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Uptake of Ecological Farming Practices by EU Farms: A Pan-European Typology

  • 1. European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra (VA), Italy
  • 2. Department of Rural Economy, Environment and Society, Scotland's Rural College, Edinburgh, UK
  • 3. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Institute of Agricultural and Forestry Economics, Vienna, Austria
  • 4. INRAE, Bordeaux School of Economics, Univ. Bordeaux, Pessac, France
  • 5. Department of Statistical Sciences "P. Fortunati", Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Italy
  • 6. Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Hellenic Agricultural Organization-DEMETER, Athens, Greece

Description

Understanding and measuring the sustainability of farms is key to evaluating progress towards policy goals for a more sustainable
agriculture. In the LIFT project, a farm typology was developed to classify farms according to their ecological performance, based on farm-level variables from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). Selected variables are used to assess three key ecological dimensions of farming: total input intensity; degree of circularity (reliance on own- produced versus external inputs); and avoidance of the use of specific inputs of concern for the environment and consumers. The combination of these aspects is considered as a
measure of the farm proximity to a full agroecological approach. The typology allows comparison of farms across farm types, countries and years. We briefly present the method and discuss two key aspects: 1) how the proposed farm typology can inform policymaking in the context of a new EU policy framework; 2) how it can inform the foreseen transformation of the FADN into a Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN). We suggest that the use of a typology approach under the new FSDN provides useful information on the impacts of the implementation of agroecological practices with an acceptable additional effort in terms of data collection.

Files

EuroChoices - 2022 - Rega - Uptake of Ecological Farming Practices by EU Farms A Pan‐European Typology.pdf

Additional details

Funding

European Commission
LIFT – Low-Input Farming and Territories - Integrating knowledge for improving ecosystem-based farming 770747