Agricultural sustainability assessment framework integrating sustainable development goals and interlinked priorities of environmental, climate and agriculture policies

Abstract

The agricultural sustainability issues are widely addressed in scientific literature and various reports by international organizations. However, there is lack of harmonized approach in addressing agricultural sustainability issues as different policies are targeting different sustainability issues in agriculture. This article analyses sustainable agriculture development and agriculture sustainability concepts and sustainability assessment approaches and tools developed for agriculture sector. Based on systematic critical literature review, this article develops the new indicators framework for sustainability assessment in agriculture which allows us to achieve harmonization of sustainable development, climate and agricultural policies in European Union (EU). The proposed indicators framework allows us to address the main sustainability issues of agriculture by linking them with sustainable development goals, environmental, climate and rural development policy priorities in EU. The main contribution of this article is linking rural policy goals with sustainable development, climate change mitigation and environmental policy goals by providing agricultural sustainability assessment framework allowing us to track these linkages through indicators system.

Spatiotemporal Estimation of the Olive and Vine Cultivations’ Growing Degree Days in the Balkans Region

“…The advances of agroclimatic research due to computational models and high accuracy datasets yield important results for the near-future atmospheric conditions over the agriculture areas. However, the results are not easily utilized by the agricultural community as an aftermath of their complexity on implementation and interpretation [41][42][43][44]. As global and regional food production is directly affected by climate change consequences, the research community must grow and share accurate and easy-to-use information and tools [42][43][44][45].…”

Scenarios of sustainable irrigation expansion in the 21st century

“…The capacity of countries to ensure food security in the context of rapidly changing biophysical conditions will be one of the major determinants for the next century 41 . In summary, our results show that by improving the socioeconomic conditions (e.g., governance) of countries, we will move closer to reaching the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of zero hunger and other highly relevant and interrelated SDGs, highlighting their interconnectedness and the importance of a holistic sustainability agenda 42 .…”

Agricultural Holdings’ Impact on the Rural Development. Case Study: Romania

“…Two important articles in clarifying the issues of the production value forecasting as a factor in the sustainable development of the agricultural sector are realized by [23] and [24]. In an impact study, the authors demonstrate that the SARIMA model (Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) can be used in relation to factors such as access to the transport network, import and export volumes of products, logistical redistribution of cargo, changes in agricultural policy, changes in consumer demand to identify price saturations and forecasting production volumes in a sustainable manner.…”