Effect of Farm Size on Sustainability Dimensions: Case of Durum Wheat in Northern Tunisia

Abstract

The sustainability analysis of wheat farms is increasingly becoming interesting for the scientific community in order to help propose a production model ensuring food security and sustainability of agricultural production. This work aims to assess cereal farms’ sustainability in Northern Tunisia via analyzing the effect of farm size on sustainability dimensions. Toward this aim, the Farm Sustainability Indicators (IDEA) method and statistical tests (ANOVA, LSD) were used for the analysis of the obtained data from a representative sample consisting of 200 farms—located in the governorates of Beja, Jendouba and Bizerte—with different sizes (<5 ha; 5–20 ha and more than 20 ha). The IDEA method is built from three indicators of sustainability (environmental, social and economic) in agriculture. The results showed a very high variability in the sustainability scores of durum wheat farms. In fact, the scores relating to each sustainability dimension vary according to the farm size. Overall, the results highlight that small farms are the most economically vulnerable despite being friendly to the environment. However, large farms were relatively more viable, but less environmentally friendly.