Agriculture first appeared almost ten thousand years ago in different regions, including the western part of the Zagros mountain range in Iran. Since then, it has been a fundamental part of all civilizations that emerged in the Plateau of Iran. There is plenty of research that linked the rise and fall of civilizations to climate through its negative impact on agriculture activity. Current concerns about global food security, climate change, animal welfare, biodiversity, and access to natural resources have led to the need for sustainable agricultural development.
Measuring sustainability is not as easy as it seems. To do that, we need to define sustainability as a measurable standard and develop a tool that can measure agricultural sustainability compared to the standard definition. What makes it a more challenging problem is that they are almost interdependent; the precise determination of each depends on the other.
There are various tools for this task, which differ in terms of spatial and temporal scopes or the level of stakeholder involvement. This means indexes with the ability to measure agriculture sustainability based on geographical, climatic, socioeconomic, and other factors are too rare and highly specific to a particular region due to the geographical dependency.
Two researchers from the Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, School of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran, developed a multidimensional index to overcome these issues. The study is accepted for the Journal of Cleaner Production and available online from 22 August 2020. Naser Valizadeh, a doctorate candidate, and Dariush Hayati, full professor at Shiraz University, conducted this study on wheat farmers in the Fars province in the southwestern part of Iran.
A Small-Scale Model for the Whole Country
Is there anything special about wheat farmers in Fars province that makes them a suitable scale model? “First of all, we picked wheat because it is a highly strategic product in food security term and also one of the most cultivated crops in Iran,” Valizadeh answered. According to the Statistical Centre of Iran, of all cultivated lands in Iran, wheat has the largest share with 56%, and Farce province is one of the country’s most important wheat producers. On the other hand, this province’s geographic location offers a variety of climates, which could be considered a model for the rest of the country’s regions, except for the northern part of Iran. “We divided the Fras province into four climate zones including cold and arid area, hot and semi-humid area, moderate and humid area, and hot and arid area,” he explained to us.
The researchers account for two main reasons for the necessity of an index to measure agriculture sustainability from different perspectives. “First, it is due to the impact that agricultural activities have on the food security and its role in the economy, especially in the rural areas,” they said. According to the Minister of Agriculture Jihad, currently, the agriculture sector share of Iran’s GDP is 8 percent. However, it is responsible for 19 percent of employment in the country. So it is important to build an indicator that could tell us whether this section activity is sustainable. On the other hand, such a measurement could bring insight to experts and leads to better consulting for decision-makers. “Second, we can give the right advice to decision-makers only when we have a good estimation of a given situation,” Valizadeh says.
A Multidimensional Headache
Before any attempt to develop an index for measuring agricultural sustainability, the researchers had to select sustainability indicators. An indicator is an observed value (variable) for measuring or providing an estimation of a specific concept such as agricultural sustainability, whereas an index is a single score made by the synthesis of several effect indicators. This is a tricky job because complex and abstract concepts such as agricultural sustainability usually have multiple dimensions that should be examined and identified. “Agriculture is a multidimensional phenomenon. Therefore, we need indicators that could measure different factors,” Valizadeh says.
Generally, agricultural sustainability could be defined in terms of economic, social, and environmental dimensions. While dozens of indicators could measure economic, social, and environmental aspects of agricultural sustainability, there is no consensus on which one should be taken into account in developing an index.
By reviewing existing theoretical and empirical literature, the researchers identified 23 indicators for measuring agricultural sustainability. However, they obtained the final list of indicators in a sequence of stages. In fact, they start with an extensive list of sub-indicators, which they combined some of them through a consolidation process. As a result, the screened list shrunk to 35 indicators. Then, they designed and performed another screening stage.
They tried to identify and verify the agricultural measurement index’s factor structure through a large sampling process. For this purpose, they designed a questionnaire to evaluate the indicators with respect to four criteria (measurability, availability, simplicity, and sustainability relevance). By evaluating respondents’ answers, including university researchers, local farmers, and agricultural extension officers, they identified 23 indicators as the selected ones to be used in the development and validation process. “With the help of a panel of academics and sustainable agriculture experts that we chose before, we narrowed down the indicators list to 23 valid items,” according to them.
There are various methodological frameworks for developing a sustainability index, but none of them are flawless. However, they decided to work with a promising framework known as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). “There is no perfect method to measure agricultural sustainability. However, some studies have shown MCDA framework and the indices developed using this framework might overcome some shortcomings with other frameworks,” Valizadeh says. Using the MCDA framework helped them to develop an index that conceptualizes agricultural sustainability as a more realistic and analyzable concept. This agricultural sustainability measurement index consists of 23 indicators, which are categorized into four criteria, including “social equity and well-being,” “durability,” “stability and compatibility,” and “productivity and efficiency.” “A multidimensional phenomenon like agricultural sustainability requires a multi-criteria index,” he says.
“We chose this method because, in every planning and strategy designed by authorities in the agriculture section, the farmers’ real needs are ignored. In fact, the ones who have the most important role in agriculture are always left out of the decision-making process.” Valizadeh says. Using these indicators, decision-makers and policymakers of agricultural ecosystems at the national, regional, provincial, parcel, and farm levels could measure agricultural sustainability and obtain diagnostic information about agricultural systems, the researchers suggested.
A Permanent Problem
Right now, the impact of agriculture on environmental factors such as biodiversity, desertification, and decreased level of aquifers is well established globally. However, even though the researchers initially took into account a wide range of indicators, the final model has shortcomings in terms of environmental factors. “We are aware of this, but there was no credible data on such indicators that we could use in developing the index,” Valizadeh says. However, this was not the only case of data shortages.
After the index development phase, the researchers did another phase of sampling to validate the index. For this purpose, they collected data from the different crops in each climate zone they defined earlier. The sampling process in this study included two distinctive phases: the first one was for identifying and verifying the factor structure of the index; the second one was for evaluating the stability of the index using the cross-validation method.
Through the second phase of sampling, which was a relatively small size, in addition to validation, they obtained the first results with the help of the newly developed index. The results indicate that the agriculture activities in Marvdasht county, located in the Moderate and humid climate region, are more sustainable than in other counties. According to Valizadeh, the evaluation results can be expressed as a single score for the sustainability index as well as separated scores for each of the 23 indicators.
This stage’s results are expressed relative to other regions’ results and are not absolute numbers in the standard range. “We could not define an absolute range for sustainability because performing such a task needs a valid and countrywide database, and right now, there is no such thing,” he says. “However, we have to start somewhere, and such an index is the first step. Further research and provision of a valid database are needed to define absolute sustainability range.” According to the researchers, this research can play the role of a platform for further research in the field of agricultural sustainability in Iran, which is a critical issue for the reasons mentioned earlier. “This index will have no problem of non-compliance with the contextual or site-specific agricultural conditions; because its indicators are evaluated by various end-user such as farmers, agricultural extension field officers, and sustainability measurement experts,” they say.