Assessing the important factors of sustainable agriculture development: An Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles‐Analytic Hierarchy Process study in the northern region of Vietnam

Abstract

AbstractCombining the systemic indicators of sustainable agriculture provided by the Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles (IDEA) framework and the pairwise comparison method provided by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique, this study examined 644 farmers in the Northern region of Vietnam (using Bac Giang province as a case study) to identify and rank those important factors according to their contributions to the farmer's practices. We found that the Economic dimension is the most important factor that contributes 54% toward the overall Sustainable Agriculture, followed by the Socio‐territorial dimension (29%) and then the Agroecology dimension (17%). We further argue that while it is reasonable for farmers to focus on the sustainable economic performance aspect of their farms, there is a need for the local authorities to be involved to maintain a balanced sustainable agriculture development in the region.