How sustainable are agricultural practices in European Union countries? A spherical fuzzy logic based evaluation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Climate change and population growth have heightened the need for a comprehensive framework to analyse the environmental impacts of agricultural practices. While traditional agricultural activities have detrimental environmental effects such as soil degradation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable agriculture is an innovative approach to minimizing humanity’s significant problems, such as depletion of natural resources, climate change, and biodiversity loss. In this study, a model is developed to evaluate the agri-environmental performance of countries. This model evaluates and ranks countries using the spherical fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and grey relational analysis methods within the European Union’s agri-environmental indicators framework. This study is among the pioneering studies to utilise the spherical fuzzy logic approach for determining the relative importance of agri-environmental performance criteria. The findings reveal that crucial factors such as the irrigable utilised agricultural area, the sales of pesticides per utilised agricultural area, and the share of main livestock types in total livestock units are critical to agri-environmental performance. In addition, in the implementation phase of the study, the performances of the European Union member countries are evaluated using the proposed model. This constitutes another contribution of the research. The results of this study indicate that Finland, Lithuania, and Sweden are the frontrunners in agri-environmental performance, while Italy, the Netherlands, and Malta rank lower. The model developed in this study has far-reaching implications for developing targeted environmental protection policies and advancing sustainable agricultural practices on a global scale.