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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1474903

The economic and environmental sustainability dimensions of agriculture: a trade-off analysis of Italian farms

Provisionally accepted
Brunella Arru Brunella Arru 1*Federica Cisilino Federica Cisilino 2Paola Sau Paola Sau 3Roberto Furesi Roberto Furesi 4Pietro Pulina Pietro Pulina 4Fabio A. Madau Fabio A. Madau 4
  • 1 Department of Soil, Plant and Food Sciences, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
  • 2 Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Research Centre for Agricultural Policies and Bio-Economy c/o University of Udine, Italy, Italy
  • 3 Doctor currently without contracts with any institution, No affiliation, italy, Italy
  • 4 Department of Agriculture, University of Sassari, Sassari, Sardegna, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Crop and livestock farms are central to achieving the 2030 Agenda goals and a sustainable agri-food system. However, the transition towards a sustainable agri-food system requires optimizing several economic and environmental farm targets that, interacting with one another, would lead to win-win opportunities, at least as desired by the European Union (EU) policies. Indeed, in recent years, the EU has fostered sustainable development in a logic of synergy between farms' environmental and economic performances. This work fits into the agricultural sustainability assessment with the aim of improving our understanding of the existence of synergy or a trade-off between the economic and environmental dimensions at a crop and livestock field and farm scale. Specifically, using a set of appropriate agricultural economic and environmental indicators, two composite indexes were created and used to perform trade-off analysis on 7.891 farms that participated in 2019 and 2020 in the Italian Farm Accountancy Data Network. The findings showed a trade-off between economic and environmental dimensions in all livestock sub-sectors and the cereals sector, while a synergy in the horticulture sector. Considering the new European sustainability policies on agriculture and global scenarios, the study significantly contributes to policymakers, practitioners, and academic debate on sustainability in agriculture.

    Keywords: Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 1, Crop and livestock farms2, Sustainability indexes3, Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN)4, Sustainable transition5

    Received: 02 Aug 2024; Accepted: 10 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Arru, Cisilino, Sau, Furesi, Pulina and Madau. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Brunella Arru, Department of Soil, Plant and Food Sciences, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, 70121, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.