Evaluating Sustainability Indicators in Organic Agriculture Systems

This literature review examines potential systems-level indicators of sustainability in organic agriculture, emphasizing the decision-making processes of farmers regarding resource use. It highlights the importance of understanding agricultural systems for implementing sustainable resource management. The review discusses the rapid development of organic agriculture in developed countries, driven by increasing domestic demand and environmental benefits. It covers field-level, cropping systems-level, energy imbalances-level, global market demands-level, technological and research advancement-level, and friendly policies advancement level indicators. The FESLM approach for assessing sustainability is also mentioned, concluding that agricultural sustainability is a continually evolving concept focused on social wellbeing. The document further references several research papers that are used to support the review.

Potential systems-level Indicator of Sustainability in Organic Agriculture
The decision making process adopted by the famers is basically about the use of resource that
is available. This is the key for sustainable of organic agriculture. In this regard, any
successfully implementation must be derived from certain conclusive and monitoring
indicators for sustainability (Thevathasan, et al., 2014). It is believed that an understanding of
the farmers' agricultural systems is indispensable to be able to implement sustainable
resource management concepts. So many famers in most cases make decisions on how to use
some given field, based on the long term observation of the type of the soil to be used.
Recently, most governments are focussing their attention in the training of farmers on how
they can adopt the organic agriculture system methods.
Literature review
With advancement of technology, organic agriculture has developed very rapidly in the
developed countries. By increasing the domestic demand of the agricultural product, the
country gets a qualification of the environmental benefit of the production and performance
of the agricultural products (Schramski & Jacobsen, 2013). Environmental benefit
quantification and performance of farmers in this countries helps in development of a
sustainable high yield in agriculture. This is done with a minimum negative environmental
impact. To ascertain the validity of this project, data from organic system were actually
obtained from different environment for survey and this was done by the certification of the
administration of the developed countries. Farming performance and the issue of
environmental indicators was actually put into consideration (Charter & Tischner, 2017).
This also increase the economic value of the information gathered by the different farmers
that could help in managing farming product and the tools and equipment’s. The agricultural
sector poses a great role of ensuring that the common agricultural polies are well achieved.
1

This originally focuses on a strong security in terms of the farm product and food security.
This also focuses on the optimal utilization of factors of production such as food land and
other resources. For the agricultural sectors to produce a tangible result in the agricultural
world, the government must ensure that the farmers are treated fairly and the environmental
factors that has been progressively introduced be taken care of without any compromise.
When this is done, it will lead to the adoption of a strategic integrating that will help achieve
sustainable agriculture in the world economy. The integration strategy is responsible of
producing and putting more emphasis in the key role of every member’s states and ask for a
sustainable development of agricultural state indicators that will monitor the integration.
The social concern have also been integrated with this information although this has received
less concentration from the member who are supposed to make it work for the betterment of
the industry .the major social factor that it can identify the rural farm animal ware fair and the
issue of social public goods. In this regards, the members put more emphasizes on the social
validity when it comes to agricultural contribution (Russo & Camposeo, 2015). In
agricultural sustainability, achievement of critical and social mass Is very important because
it offer sustenance to the infrastructure services and repository of skills.
The aggregation level of the the indicators testing done in organic includes the use of
individual soil structure and measurement, the points to be used, the cropping system to be
deployed and faring system to be adopted. This dictates the quality of the engineering and
biophysical rsources needed in a company.
Understanding sustainable agriculture
In a sustainable agricultural system, the producers must make sustainable interventions which
will lead to sustainable productivity without necessarily in degrading the land resource that is
dependents on production. In his case, the critical issue is to make a decision on the best
2

interventions and which decision will give the best benefits. One key factors in the issue of
design monitoring system is to track the entire impact of the role of management integration
assessing the contributors.
The sustainability concept is considerably popular but it comes without any, easing unless it
is established by the concerned team. This is about the system that are valuable to track the
rate of performance in agricultural sector (Li , 2017 pg456). The landscape of agriculture in
this sustainability is relied towards the ideal solution. This is also constituted through the
agricultural management and decisions made by a number of farmers who are interested in
the entrepreneurship.
Field level indicators
Field level sustainability should actually reflects the entire capacity of the agricultural
production system and maintain certain level of the future. This process is meant for
monitoring over a sufficient period as well as estimating the production changes for a period
of time. The most kwon physical parameter is actually related to the type of soil (organic
matter content, physical soil structure (pore structure), soil type, water retention capacity,
nutrient content, credibility of the topsoil, etc.), and also climatic data so that the crop or
fodder production potential is derived from the most important agro-ecological parameters
(Gathorne, et al., 2016).
Cropping systems level indicators
Removing or addition of the external by products in most cases depends on the system
consideration and many other factors such as the strategies for livestock, grazing in the field
after the harvest the role of fertilizers application and the specific crop targeted by the farmer.
The identified crop system is noticed by factors such as leaching and fixation. Research has
shown that 100% of the organic would lead to a significant reduction of the range of
3

environment. On the three hand, this must results to the environmental benefits such as acting
as a link for the entire greenhouse used. This also enhanced biostatistics and biodiversity as a
results, this prevent flooding landscape (Nemecek, et al., 2016).
Energy Imbalances level indicators
The agricultural organic method like removing the synthetic and fertilizers as well as
pesticides. This reduces the energy balances. Due to this, the organic farmers accommodate
several factors that gives them motivation to more emerging. This also gives them advantage
to value their customers who have more degree of concern in the environmental
sustainability. For the organic growers to have a balance for he increase effectively, they
must have systems-based understanding of the energy of utilization on their farms
(Schramski, et al., 2013).
Global Market Demands Level Indicators
According to (Charter, et al., 2017), agriculture is now considered as a agro food chain the
global market and issue like food security, the welfare f the animals ad government
regulation are now becoming a serous factors to consider when talking about the success of
the economy. This sectors has been faced by new challenges that needs to meet the growing
demands for the food and food security. It makes the demand for food t be more competitive
at an international levels and farmers are now able to produce a very high quality level of
food. Farmers are required to produce products that are free from chemicals and diseases.
Research on conventional agricultural farming though have indicated high yields in overall
production than the organic one, yet most of its products have not met the international
standards for quality accreditation. And as a consequence, many of the agricultural
consumers prefers organically made products.
Technological and Research advancement Level Indicators
4

The reason research and advice was given to farmers was to ensure that the rate of production
increases and productivity stabilizes. This would increase the profit received from the
productivity. For now the emphasis is in achieving the sustainability and this means that there
is a need to change every practice and use different methods of in defining research priorities.
When giving a solution to the societal demands. The priority in this case includes biological
pest control, biotechnological information gathering, and bioremediation as well as precision
farming, integrated and organic farming systems (Weaver, et al., 2017). Today, agricultural
sector is widely endowed with technologies that are either available or under development -
that are environmentally friendly.
Friendly Policies Advancement Level Indicators
Many of the policies that agricultural oriented focus on the expansion of agriculture and the
environmental fragile land. This means that there is high level of resource exploitation. This
does not require farmers to account for the environmental split over into consideration
United Nations policy on environmental conservation & economic developments supports
organic farming system that get capitalised into the value of land, encouraging a greater
intensity of production and influencing the kind of technologies adopted. The policies that
relates to agricultural practices in most cases impose certain environmental problems on the
farmers and acts as a condition for higher level that most farmers cannot match. For this
policies to worked, farmers needs to be compensated accordingly and proper equipment’s
provided. It also noted that some countries do not remunerated some benefits given to famers
and this discourage farmers very much (Metson, et al., 2015).
THE DIMENSIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY
Technical adversary have proposed different meaning of sustainability from very different
perspectives. According to international body of research, sustainability involves successful
5

management of resources for the scale of agricultural use. This is with an aim of changing the
human life and satisfaction of human needs but at the same time maintaining the
enhancement of the quality of the environmental conservation factors and natural resources.
Procedures to Assess Sustainability using the FESLM
Sustainability can be measured using the FESLAM approach which is a participatory method
when performing a data collection. This means that the users will be making a structured
interviews to the members without their knowledge and at the same time supplementing the
knowledge acquired with the necessary data. This procedure requires an entire involvement
of all the stages of sustainability and inclusive evaluation of factors of production. The
method also involves creating the indicators to be used in final rating especially for the
sustainability of the entire system (Kuznetsova, 2015 pg343). From this assessment, the
database is basically a derivative of a sustainable evaluation and quantitative analysis that is
required to mix the techniques.
For a proper analysis, each and every indicators is analysed in a given format the results
recorded in a separate sheet. This shows how the indicators have contributed to the land
management objectives. The research team members must agree on the best criteria through
which a judge is performing is the indicators as well as participate in the performance
indicators. In most cases, the procedure used in normally to scale the indicators to ascertain
level.
In conclusion, agricultural sustainability is a concept which is continually moving and
growing and due to this, it is not easy to measure. This reflect our understanding of the
systems themselves are in a continual transition and this should be approached as a
6

sustainable concept that is aimed at striving for the social wellbeing. The objective of this
social wellbeing can be measured to a level in which the every techniques can be clearly
interpreted.
7

References
Schramski, J. R., Jacobsen, K. L., Smith, T. W., Williams, M. A., & Thompson, T. M.
(2013). Energy as a potential systems-level indicator of sustainability in organic
agriculture: Case study model of a diversified, organic vegetable production
system. Ecological modelling, 267, 102-114.
Weaver, P., Jansen, L., Van Grootveld, G., Van Spiegel, E., & Vergragt, P.
(2017). Sustainable technology development. Routledge.
Nemecek, T., Jungbluth, N., i Canals, L. M., & Schenck, R. (2016). Environmental impacts
of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?. The International
Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 21(5), 607-620.
Charter, M., & Tischner, U. (Eds.). (2017). Sustainable solutions: developing products and
services for the future. Routledge.
Gathorne-Hardy, A., Reddy, D. N., Venkatanarayana, M., & Harriss-White, B. (2016).
System of Rice Intensification provides environmental and economic gains but at the
expense of social sustainability—A multidisciplinary analysis in India. Agricultural
Systems, 143, 159-168.
Thevathasan, N., Gordon, A., Simpson, J., Peng, X., Silim, S., Soolanayakanahally, R., & de
Gooijer, H. (2014). Sustainability indicators of biomass production in agroforestry
systems. The Open Agriculture Journal, 8(1), 1-11.
Metson, G. S., Iwaniec, D. M., Baker, L. A., Bennett, E. M., Childers, D. L., Cordell, D., ... &
White, S. (2015). Urban phosphorus sustainability: Systemically incorporating social,
ecological, and technological factors into phosphorus flow analysis. Environmental
Science & Policy, 47, 1-11.
Cazenave, A., Dieng, H.B., Meyssignac, B., Von Schuckmann, K., Decharme, B. and
Berthier, E., 2014. The rate of sea-level rise. Nature Climate Change, 4(5), p.358.
Von Schuckmann, K., Palmer, M.D., Trenberth, K.E., Cazenave, A., Chambers, D.,
Champollion, N., Hansen, J., Josey, S.A., Loeb, N., Mathieu, P.P. and Meyssignac, B., 2016.
An imperative to monitor Earth's energy imbalance. Nature Climate Change, 6(2), p.138.
Kuznetsova, E., Ruiz, C., Li, Y.F. and Zio, E., 2015. Analysis of robust optimization for
decentralized microgrid energy management under uncertainty. International Journal of
Electrical Power & Energy Systems, 64, pp.815-832.
Luthra, S., Mangla, S.K. and Kharb, R.K., 2015. Sustainable assessment in energy planning
and management in Indian perspective. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 47,
pp.58-73.
8

Li, Y., O’Donnell, J., García-Castro, R. and Vega-Sánchez, S., 2017. Identifying stakeholders
and key performance indicators for district and building energy performance analysis. Energy
and Buildings, 155, pp.1-15.
Russo, G., Vivaldi, G.A., De Gennaro, B. and Camposeo, S., 2015. Environmental
sustainability of different soil management techniques in a high-density olive orchard.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 107, pp.498-508.
Sun, F., Cao, Y., Cai, C., Li, S., Yu, C. and Yao, J., 2016. Regulation of nutritional
metabolism in transition dairy cows: Energy homeostasis and health in response to post-
ruminal choline and methionine. PloS one, 11(8), p.e0160659.
Gong, J., Darling, S.B. and You, F., 2015. Perovskite photovoltaics: life-cycle assessment of
energy and environmental impacts. Energy & Environmental Science, 8(7), pp.1953-1968.
Russo, G., Vivaldi, G.A., De Gennaro, B. and Camposeo, S., 2015. Environmental
sustainability of different soil management techniques in a high-density olive orchard.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 107, pp.498-508.
9