Uncertainty Assessment in Multi-Criteria Sustainability Assessments

How can indicator weights for multi-criteria sustainability assessments be determined based on experts' opinions? How do different opinions affect the results of sustainability assessments

A Global Vision and Strategy for Organic Farming Research. First Draft.

Organic agriculture world-wide offers the promise of a future to produce and distribute food and other farm products in a healthy, ecologically sound, truly sustainable and fair way. The full benefits of organic agriculture are just now being realized—from ecosystem services to the provision of healthier food - yet, to reach its full potential organic farming needs to address many challenges. While organic agriculture has grown in strength and is in the most favorable position it has ever been in with respect to market conditions, government policies and international institutional support, it still does not have adequate resources to continue its expansion. The Technology Innovation Platform of IFOAM (TIPI) has developed a vision and an agenda to advance organic agriculture through research, development, innovation and technology transfer. TIPI’s vision recognizes that current technologies based on heavy use of external inputs that are toxic and pollute the environment come with a price. Investments in ecosystem services and the development of technologies that are productive, stable, adaptable, resilient, and fairly shared are much more likely to sustain the world’s population in a rapidly changing environment. Sustainable pathways to innovation will require engagement of all stakeholders in a science driven multi-disciplinary approach. Such an approach seeks to (1) Empower rural areas, (2) Provide eco-functional intensification that produces food and ecosystem services, and (3) Provide food for the health and well-being available to all. Organic agriculture must build the capacity to fulfill the world’s food needs for the entire population if it is to fulfill its mission. The new paradigm proposed by TIPI is founded upon a whole systems approach, the engagement of farmers, researchers and other practitioners in a co-innovative approach; and open access technologies that are readily adapted to local conditions. While there are barriers and bottlenecks that will need to be overcome for this vision to be realized, TIPI calls upon the organic community to support its 14 point action plan to advance organic agriculture in a forward-thinking and innovative way

Using the Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment Routine (SMART) for the Systematic Analysis of Trade-Offs and Synergies between Sustainability Dimensions and Themes at Farm Level

When trying to optimize the sustainability performance of farms and farming systems, a consideration of trade-offs and synergies between different themes and dimensions is required. The aim of this paper is to perform a systematic analysis of trade-offs and synergies across all dimensions and themes. To achieve this aim we used the Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment Routine (SMART)-Farm Tool which operationalizes the Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA) Guidelines by defining science-based indicator sets and assessment procedures. It identifies the degree of goal achievement with respect to the 58 themes defined in the SAFA Guidelines using an impact matrix that defines 327 indicators and 1769 relations between sustainability themes and indicators. We illustrate how the SMART-Farm Tool can be successfully applied to assess the sustainability performance of farms of different types and in different geographic regions. Our analysis revealed important synergies between themes within a sustainability dimension and across dimensions. We found major trade-offs within the environmental dimension and between the environmental and economic dimension. The trade-offs within the environmental dimension were even larger than the trade-offs with other dimensions. The study also underlines the importance of the governance dimension with regard to achieving a good level of performance in the other dimensions

Diversification on Organic Farms

The manual highlights generic approaches to farm diversification under organic management. It has been developed with the understanding that farmers live in various contexts that may require unique adaptations of these guidelines

Pest and Disease Management in Selected Organic Crops - A Resource Manual for Trainers

This manual presents the principles of organic pest and disease management as well as specific measures that apply to particular pests and diseases of cocoa, field beans, groundnuts, and soybeans grown in Africa. The training manual further outlines some of the regulatory considerations for use of various inputs in organic crop production, especially when farmers are considering marketing

Evaluation Report for the project: Mainstreaming Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) into Agricultural Systems in Africa for the Period 2019-2023

In 2011, the Executive Council of the African Union (AU) took a decision to build an Africa wide organic agriculture platform. The African Union Commission (AUC) accepted the mandate, built the so-called Continental Steering Committee for Ecological Organic Agriculture (CSC) and launched the Ecological Organic Agriculture Initiative (EOA-I). It got support among others from SDC in the framework of the Global Program Food Security (GPFS). Organic agriculture and agroecology are worldwide concepts that are well-defined, researched and promoted by the United Nations (e.g. the FAO Agroecology elements), governments (e.g. regulation of Organic Agriculture in over 90 countries), civil society (e.g. the global organic umbrella, IFOAM Organics International) and science (e.g. FiBL research). SDC has been providing support to EOA-I under the project name “Mainstreaming Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) into Agricultural Systems in Africa”. A second phase is now being implemented, from 2019 – 2023. SDC contracted FiBL in April 2022 to implement the evaluation of the second phase of the project, based on 44 evaluation questions along the DAC/OECD evaluation criteria. Information for this evaluation originates from various SDC/BVAT discussions, 2 hybrid stakeholder workshops in English (70 participants) and French (20 participants), 35 project documents, from 101 respondents in a stakeholder survey, 55 respondents in face-to-face (individual and group) interviews and 17 respondents in online interviews

Pest and Disease Management in Selected Organic Crops - A Resource Manual for Trainers

This manual presents the principles of organic pest and disease management as well as specific measures that apply to particular pests and diseases of cocoa, field beans, groundnuts, and soybeans grown in Africa. The training manual further outlines some of the regulatory considerations for use of various inputs in organic crop production, especially when farmers are considering marketing

Training Handbook: The New EU Organic Regulation (2018/848) for Producer Groups

The training handbook was developed for organic producer groups to understand and apply the requirements of the new EU Organic Regulation. It represents FiBL’s status of understanding of the new EU regulatory requirements as per March 2024

Organic Cabbage Production - A Resource Manual for Trainers in Africa

The manual highlights practical approaches to organic cabbage production in Africa. The manual is intended for use by trainers of trainers and trainers of farmers on organic agriculture

Organic Cabbage Production - A Resource Manual for Trainers in Africa

The manual highlights practical approaches to organic cabbage production in Africa. The manual is intended for use by trainers of trainers and trainers of farmers on organic agriculture