Assessment of the EU market farms sustainability based on a composite sustainability index
Keywords:
Agricultural Holdings, Economic Size, European Union, Farm SustainabilityAbstract
The fundamental understanding of sustainability in agriculture is clarified and elaborated in a broader definition, according to which conceptually agriculture should become ecologically compatible as remaining economically efficient and socially responsible at the same time. It turns out that in last decades, the agricultural production entities in EU are under transformation due to market and regulation factors, which results in increase of their economic size, leading into a shrink in their number. Does this process escalades crucially the farming preservation or boosts economically their sustainability? This study aims to find out and analyze the connection and characteristics between the farms size in economic classes and changes in their sustainability index aiming to illustrate the EU differences between the all Member States expressed as holdings. The results, extracted from the FADN data, could reveal a potential of the smaller farms to exist and run sustainably while the bigger units face severe threats to incur ecological damages in pursuing better production efficiency.
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