Methods and indicators for measuring the social, environmental and economic impacts of food quality schemes

Abstract

The present methodological handbook provides the methodologies which will be applied in each work package of the Strength2Food project. In particular, it contains a list of indicators on how to assess sustainability in food and agro-food supply chains. This methodological handbook aims at facilitating the task for field studies, both proposing several prioritizations (indicator, variable, value chain level), detailing how we will combine relatively common variables (eg., number of animals per hectare, …) into indicators (eg., carbon footprint) and indicating how we will provide default values for the majority of the requested variables (for one indicator, providing only 2-3 case-specific values and relying on default values for the other variables is enough to obtain a case-specific indicator). Methods and issues specific to each workpackage are also discussed in dedicated sections and the description of each indicator include a description of whether and how the indicator will be applied to Food Quality Schemes (WP5), Public Sector Procurement Policies (WP6) and Short Food Supply Chains (WP7)