An integrated sustainability score based on agro-ecological and socioeconomic indicators. A case study of stockless organic farming in Italy

The purpose of our research is to develop an integrated sustainability score (ISS) choosing the farm level as system’s boundaries and developing a methodology, based on a geometric mean algorithm, which is negatively affected by the internal imbalance of the agroecosystem. The first step is to identify and calculate the indicators of systems and sub-systems to assess the agro-ecological and socioeconomic dimensions of sustainability. The second step is the selection, weighting and integration of indicators that permit the calculation of the ISS ranging from 0 to 1. The farm sustainability score is categorized into three levels: weak, intermediate and strong. This methodology has been verified on a stockless organic farming system case study of 12 farms in Italy. Results show that most of the farms reached intermediate levels of sustainability but there are significant differences on ISS scores within the study group. Agro-ecological and socioeconomic dimension play a different role in highlighting the coexistence of different models of sustainability. A further development of the present methodology should include an in-depth analysis of the social dimension of sustainability and integrate an assessment procedure to formulate improved management practices that will help farmers to find win-win solutions that decrease the contrast between environmental and economic sustainability.