Sustainability indicators

INSPIA aims to provide for farmers a European index about sustainable productive agriculture based on monitoring different types of indicators – basically economic, social and environmental indicators – since this is what needs to be balanced to achieve sustainability. The indicators are tools to assess the status of sustainability, especially to highlight what needs to be changed to enhance sustainability. In this regard, society can help through enabling legislation, since the outcomes farmers need to achieve are also needed by society as a whole.

INSPIA believes that indicators need to be essentially based on what farmers do in practice to farm the land. Hence, INSPIA promotes a range of Best Management Practices (BMPs) that have been demonstrated to improve the farmed environment for biodiversity, as well as protect and enhance soil, water and air quality on which productivity relies. Calculating the index values for each indicator is mostly based BMP implementation and the consequences for farmers, e.g. how much time or money it took to implement, or the impact on crop yields. However, INSPIA also recognizes that index values in other indicator systems use rely more on monitoring, particularly for biodiversity and water quality. Monitoring has thus been included where feasible, particularly for general public monitoring, e.g. of water quality. Farm specific monitoring is limited to what is economically possible for farmers, so it includes some soil and nutrient monitoring, but not monitoring the numbers of birds and bees, or water quality, to ensure that INSPIA can be a widely used indicator system on farms across Europe.

With such a set of indicators, the index values are actively influenced by farmers. The values range from the lowest to the highest, depending on what farmers do in practice. An optimal set of index values is a set of uniformly high values. A high average score, but which includes very low values on some indicators, is suboptimal and not sustainable, even though there are steps in the right direction. INSPIA wants to re-vitalize how farmers think about sustainability. INSPIA believes farmers want to know more about how to integrate the use of technology (which all farming systems use, including organic ones) with the use of ecosystem services, as the overall focus and direction needed for achieving sustainable productive agriculture.

For each type of indicator, they are focused on selected key outcomes, particularly environmental ones as key to achieving sustainable productive agriculture, as shown below:

Economic – Profit/production Efficiency

Social – Farmer Welfare and Well-being

Environmental – Biodiversity Enhancement + Resource Use and Protection

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