Towards a new framework to assess agri-food value chains’ sustainability – The case of chestnut value chain

Abstract

Food systems rely on natural resources for production causing their depletion. Sustainability assessment can encourage farms and agri-food companies to improve sustainability performances. Sustainability assessment frameworks and tools differ in their purposes, scope, methods of application, and required time for execution; however, most of them do not fit with value chains, or they do not cover all sustainability dimensions. Our objective is to propose a holistic framework to assess sustainability at agri-food value chains level. The proposed framework combines the Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) (El Hage, 2012) [1] and The Agri-food Evaluation Framework (TEEB) [2]. It incorporates the concepts of Socio-Ecological Systems, Assemblage, and Social Practices. It integrates system dynamics by emphasising human and natural capital stocks and their users. We explain in detail the methodological steps we followed to construct and to apply this new framework to two case studies in Italy and France. The new framework was applied to real-life case studies and has shown its effectiveness and demonstrates its potential for widespread use in similar scenarios.