Sustainable economic development assessment model for family farms

Abstract

This article is aimed to address the issue of sustainable economic development assessment in family farms. A complex methodology of family farm sustainable economic development assessment based on the family farm sustainable economic development index has been created following analysis of family farm sustainable economic development assessment methodologies, which are proposed by scientists and used in practice. The Kruskal-Wallis test and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to check the relevance of the index in family farm sustainable economic development assessment. The index value range was calculated using descriptive statistics. The characteristics of the index allow creating models for family farm sustainable economic development classification types based on k-means clustering. The family farms were classified into nine types. Examples of Lithuanian family farms were provided to demonstrate practical applications of the index. Furthermore, analysis of Lithuanian family farm sustainable economic development types by specialisation enabled to identify the main reasons for the existing situation in the farms.