Old Wine in New Bottles: Exploiting Data from the EU’s Farm Accountancy Data Network for Pan-EU Sustainability Assessments of Agricultural Production Systems

Keith B Matthews,Kirsty L Blackstock,Juan Cadillo-Benalcazar,Ansel Renner,Mario Giampietro,Joep F Schyns,Dave G Miller,Alba Juarez-Bourke,Kerry A Waylen,Doug H Wardell-Johnson

doi:10.3390/su131810080

Abstract

The paper presents insights from carrying out a pan-EU sustainability assessment using Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data (the old wine) with societal metabolism accounting (SMA) processes (the new bottles). The SMA was deployed as part of a transdisciplinary study with EU policy stakeholders of how EU policy may need to change to deliver sustainability commitments, particularly to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The paper outlines the concepts underlying SMA and its specific implementation using the FADN data. A key focus was on the interactions between crop and livestock systems and how this determines imported feedstuffs requirements, with environmental and other footprints beyond the EU. Examples of agricultural production systems performance are presented in terms of financial/efficiency, resource use (particularly the water footprint) and quantifies potential pressures on the environment. Benefits and limitations of the FADN dataset and the SMA outputs are discussed, highlighting the challenges of linking quantified pressures with environmental impacts. The paper concludes that the complexity of agriculture’s interactions with economy and society means there is great need for conceptual frameworks, such as SMA, that can take multiple, non-equivalent, perspectives and that can be deployed with policy stakeholders despite generating uncomfortable knowledge.

Highlights

The first chord diagram (Figure 2) presents a Member State (MS) level summary of the relative farm net income (FNI) as a simple representation of the financial outcomes for agriculture
The Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) datasets provide a wealth of financial data that can be used to derive a wide range of detailed accounting metrics, but the two chord figures provide enough of a financial context from which the physical aspects of the societal metabolism analysis can be interpreted with stakeholders
The pan-EU sustainability assessments made in the context of assessing the role of EU agricultural policy in delivering SDG2 is an example of responding to the challenges highlighted by the special issue editors

Summary

Introduction

This paper contributes to the deliberations within the special issue by presenting the authors’ insights gained by using new sustainability assessment methods with existing European Union farm accountancy data as part of transdisciplinary research with. Ecological issues, how progress towards EU sustainability goals may be an artefact of what is included within the analysis. The paper provides theoretical and practical knowledge to guide the conduct of sustainability assessments within the agri-food domain based both on the implementation of a pan-EU analysis and deliberation across the science–policy interface. Paper for the Bonn 2011 Conference: The Water, Energy and Food Security. Discourses, knowledge and politics of an emerging resource governance concept.

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Conclusion