Abstract
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollutants, soil erosion and groundwater pollution are some of the negative aspects blamed on livestock farming, so their level of sustainability needs to be assessed, taking into account the territory in which they operate. The research focuses on the assessment of sustainability performance in the four dimensions of good governance: environmental integrity, economic resilience and social well-being, considered by the ‘‘Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems’’ (SAFA) tool developed by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The objective of applying this methodology is to highlight the sustainability dimensions in which the ten analyzed farms are weakest and the ones in which they show the most strength, in order to provide farmers a tool to understand the criticalities on which to intervene. The farms considered follow the principles of agroecology and organic farming, which are decisive in the pursuit of sustainable development. The overall results show a satisfactory level of sustainability with high prospects for improvement, in line with the EU commitments undertaken in the Green Deal and the Millennium Development Goals. Livestock farms must, therefore, be encouraged and accompanied with targeted technical assistance strategies and appropriate agroecological protocols.
Highlights
The urgency of starting a process of environmental regeneration as a result of the pressure exerted by human activities on the Earth’s resources prompted in 2015 the Member States of the United Nations to draw up the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), valid until 2030, in order to provide a shared program of peace and prosperity for the people and planet, for the present and the future [1]
Agroecology is considered the scientific basis of sustainable agriculture, as it integrates traditional knowledge with modern knowledge to obtain production methods that respect environment and society, in order to achieve production goals, and the social equality and ecological sustainability of the agroecosystem [4]
In order to combat food deprivation and world hunger, the green revolution started a process of introducing new technologies into agriculture that began in the 1940s and spread in the 1960s and 1970s [22]. It led to numerous disadvantages and negative aspects, including increased environmental impact, loss of biodiversity, erosion of genetic resources and socio-economic decline affecting smallholders that could not afford the expense of new technologies to increase their production
Summary
The sustainable development can be intended as proposals based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Lewandowski et al [2] defined sustainable agriculture as the “management and utilization of the agricultural ecosystem in a way that maintains its biological diversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality, and ability to function, so that it can fulfill, today and in the future, significant ecological, economic and social functions at the local, national and global levels and does not harm other ecosystems”. Agroecology is considered the scientific basis of sustainable agriculture, as it integrates traditional knowledge with modern knowledge to obtain production methods that respect environment and society, in order to achieve production goals, and the social equality and ecological sustainability of the agroecosystem [4]. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a document proposing the ten elements of agroecology [7] in which the common characteristics of agroecological systems are defined and key considerations in enabling the environment to accommodate agroecology are given
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