Abstract
Complying with the carrying capacity of local and global ecosystems is a prerequisite to ensure environmental sustainability. Based on the example of Swiss mountain dairy farms, the goal of our research was firstly to investigate the relationship between farm global and local environmental performance. Secondly, we aimed to analyse the relationship between farm environmental and economic performance. The analysis relied on a sample of 56 Swiss alpine dairy farms. For each farm, the cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle assessment was calculated, and the quantified environmental impacts were decomposed into their on- and off-farm parts. We measured global environmental performance as the digestible energy produced by the farm per unit of global environmental impact generated from cradle-to-farm-gate. We assessed local environmental performance by dividing farm-usable agricultural area by on-farm environmental impact generation. Farm economic performance was measured by work income per family work unit, return on equity and output/input ratio. Spearman’s correlation analysis revealed no significant relationship, trade-offs or synergies between global and local environmental performance indicators. Interestingly, trade-offs were observed far more frequently than synergies. Furthermore, we found synergies between global environmental and economic performance and mostly no significant relationship between local environmental and economic performance. The observed trade-offs between global and local environmental performance mean that, for several environmental issues, any improvement in global environmental performance will result in deterioration of local environmental performance and vice versa. This finding calls for systematic consideration of both dimensions when carrying out farm environmental performance assessments.
Highlights
Assessing and improving the sustainability of farming is an issue of growing importance, especially because farms, and, more precisely, the cradle-to-farm-gate link of the food chain, play a major role in the environmental impact generation of the entire chain
The present work relied on the same dataset as the one used in Jan et al [11], which was originally collected as part of the Life Cycle Assessment Farm Accountancy Data Network (LCA-FADN) Project in the years 2006–2008 [23]
Contrariwise, we found synergies between farm global environmental and economic performance
Summary
Assessing and improving the sustainability of farming is an issue of growing importance, especially because farms, and, more precisely, the cradle-to-farm-gate link of the food chain, play a major role in the environmental impact generation of the entire chain (see e.g., [1,2,3,4,5,6]). Farm global environmental performance is defined as the environmental intensity of agricultural production in the cradle-to-farm-gate link of the food chain [7]. Environmental intensity is measured as the global (i.e., on- and off-farm) environmental impact generation per unit of biophysical farm output (e.g., digestible energy produced for humans by the farm) [7]. Local environmental performance is measured by the on-farm environmental impact generation per unit of farm usable agricultural area [7]
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