Assessment of Sustainability in Agriculture of the European Union Countries

Abstract

This paper aimed at evaluating the level of sustainability in agriculture in 28 member states of the European Union. The surveys were carried out based on a synthetic technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS)-based measure. This method synthesizes factors of various nature and assigns them a synthetic aggregate measure. The analysis made it possible to develop a ranking of EU member states according to a differentiated level of measures and assign them to one of four groups characterized by different levels of sustainability in agriculture. The group of member states representing the highest level of sustainability in agriculture included two countries from Central and Eastern Europe, i.e., Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The group of countries with a greater than average level of sustainability comprised 14 member states of the European Union, including seven countries admitted to the community after 2004. The group with a low level of sustainability consisted of eight EU member states, six of them from the group of old EU member states, i.e., Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom, and two new members, i.e., Romania and Slovenia. On the other hand, the lowest level of sustainability was characteristic of two “old EU” member states, i.e., The Netherlands and Belgium, and two “new EU” member states, i.e., Cyprus and Malta. The differentiated synthetic measure values showed disparities in the level of sustainability in agriculture among the member states of the European Union. They are a result of the varied level of development of this sector, production intensity and the resulting environmental impact.

The Spatial and Temporal Variability of the Effects of Agricultural Practices on the Environment

“…For example, on the one hand, there is much agreement between the intensity of nitrogen input in both arable and grassland systems and the classification of countries, such as Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland, as a group with high intensity agricultural systems (45)(46)(47). On the other hand, the results are in line with another recent study [59] that classified some countries from Central and Eastern Europe (Slovakia and the Czech Republic) as a group with the highest level of sustainability, therefore mirroring this study's classification: "Nature inclusive agricultural system".…”

Heat-related productivity loss: benefits derived by working in the shade or work-time shifting

“…With the aim of extending the economic cost estimation to the whole province of Florence, the AWU indicator, already used in previous bioeconomic studies on agriculture (Spi cka and Smutka, 2014;Mantino, 2017;Nowak et al, 2019) was calculated. As defined by the European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/knowledge4policy/glossary/annual-work-unit_en), 1 AWU corresponds to the work performed by one person who is occupied on an agricultural holding on a full-time basis (about 1,800 h).…”

Economic Sustainability of Dairy Farms in the EU

“…Several papers about sustainability of dairy farms are available (Meul et al, 2009;Acosta-Alba et al, 2012;Czyżewski et al, 2019;Nowak et al, 2019). Research most often focuses on effectiveness (Wilczyński et al, 2020) or determinants for the development of the dairy market (Wierzejski et al, 2020).…”

“…The obtained results of a synthetic variable allow to order multidimensional objects according to preferences (domination). Until now, no one has used this method to assess the economic sustainability of dairy farms (Meul et al, 2009;Nowak et al, 2019;Silva et al, 2014). Finally, the authors of the paper prepared the Hellwig measure of dairy farms development in the EU (Table 5).…”