Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation

RIRDC Short Report No 20:
Developing Indicators for Sustainable Agriculture

'Sustainability' is one of the buzz-words of our times. It has been attached to any number of social and economic pursuits: we want sustainable economic growth, sustainable development, sustainable forestry, a sustainable population, sustainable cities, and so on. Increasingly, we also talk about the need for "sustainable agriculture".

But just because we use the word in abundance doesn't mean we're any closer to achieving it in practice, or even in understanding what it means. In agriculture, we need to define it in terms that farmers can understand and to develop ways in which they can measure it. Above all, perhaps, we need to ensure that the concept is useful to farmers.

What is sustainable agriculture?

The idea of sustainable agriculture has been around a long time. Since the very first crop was sown and animal was penned, farmers have tried to ensure that their land produces a similar or increasing yield of products year after back-breaking year; recent attempts to popularise the concept build on this tradition.

One modern definition is as follows:

Sustainable agriculture is the use of farming systems and practices which maintain or enhance:

• the economic viability of agricultural production;
• the natural resource base; and
• other ecosystems which are influenced by agricultural activities.

This definition can be supplemented by some fundamental principles of sustainable agriculture:

• that farm productivity is enhanced over the long term;
• that adverse impacts on the natural resource base and associated ecosystems are ameliorated, minimised or avoided;
• that residues resulting from the use of chemicals in agriculture are minimised;
• that net social benefit (in both monetary and non-monetary terms) from agriculture is maximised; and
• that farming systems are sufficiently flexible to manage risks associated with the vagaries of climate and markets.

Few would argue that the definition and principles of sustainability are not thoroughly worthy. But the question remains: how can we measure sustainability?

Developing a list of indicators

The fact is, sustainability cannot be measured directly; it is too elusive a concept and it operates over too long a time scale. The best we can do is to identify measurable phenomena that, when put together, suggest how sustainable our system might be. These are called indicators.

Indicators are widely used as benchmarks to help gauge performance in a number of human endeavours. For example, the consumer price index and gross domestic product are indicators, albeit crude ones, of economic performance.

In Australia, some work has already been done on the development of indicators for sustainable agriculture. In 1992, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Resource Management (SCARM) established an expert group to develop a set of indicators to be used by decision-makers at the regional and national scales. This led to the establishment of a National Collaborative Project on Indicators of Sustainable Agriculture, which aims to prepare 'report cards' on the sustainability of Australian agriculture.

A number of criteria can be used to judge the usefulness of a given indicator:

• is it measurable?
• is it relevant and easy to use?
• does it provide a representative picture?
• is it easy to interpret and does it show trends over time?
• is it responsive to changes?
• does it have a reference to compare it against so that users are able to assess the significance of its values?
• can it be measured at a reasonable cost, and can it be updated?

SCARM proposed that regional/national indicators could be divided into four main areas:

• profitability;
• land and water quality to sustain production;
• managerial skills; and
• off-site environmental impacts.

Seeking the opinions of farmers

Consultants involved in Farm Management 500 (FM500) recently completed a project for RIRDC that involved farmers in the review and further development of sustainable agriculture indicators.

Participating farmers were all members of FM500. This is a collaborative venture funded by farmers, farm advisers, facilitators and agribusinesses which aims to improve farm business management through training and education. FM500 began in 1991 (with seed money from RIRDC) and currently operates through 40 farmer groups in NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

What farmers think of indicators

The coordinators of the sustainability indicators project analysed the SCARM indicators and constructed user-friendly interpretations of them. They also compiled a list of possible on-farm indicators from a range of sources and produced a draft guide that discussed and explained their use.

The draft guide was then used in discussion groups with FM500 members as a basis for debating sustainability policies in general, and the various indicators in particular. Comments on the usefulness of each indicator were received from about 180 farm businesses.

The graphs show how various proposed national/regional (Figure 1) and farm-level (Figure 2) indicators were viewed by farmers: a ranking of five would mean that farmers thought a particular indicator was very useful; a ranking of one would mean that farmers thought the indicator was irrelevant.

These results suggest that FM500 farmers generally agreed with the potential value of all indicators at both scales. The lowest ranked national/regional indicator, 'length of contact with non-agricultural areas', achieved an average rating of just under 3, implying that even this indicator was considered useful, if not of major importance.

Farmer groups sometimes varied in their views, depending on the type of enterprises represented or the environments in which they operated. For example, farmers from regions with typically alkaline soils generally rated percentage organic carbon in the soil more highly than they did soil acidification.

The interests of the facilitator or the nature of the agricultural enterprise could explain other variations. For instance, groups facilitated by a consultant whose focus was on cropping tended to value indicators such as water use efficiency (WUE) more highly than groups from grazing areas where the WUE concept was not so well developed.

According to the project coordinators, the general agreement of FM500 farmers on the relevance of indicators was not surprising, given that they were intimately involved with their development. In addition, the high rating given to profitability as a measure of sustainability could reflect the bias of FM500 facilitators - but may also reflect the fact that such indicators are generally better developed and understood than others.

Figure 1. FM500 evaluation of regiona/national indicators: 1= not useful (lowest value); 5 = useful (highest value).

Indeed, the high ratings given to almost all indicators, be they orientated towards financial, environmental or management issues, suggest that farmers are not averse to taking a holistic view of farm performance.

Figure 2.FM500 evaluation of on-farm indicators: 1 = not useful (lowest value): 5 = useful (highest value)

Making indicators relevant to farmers

The process of consulting with farmers about sustainability indicators was just as informative as the outcomes themselves. Early on, facilitators found it necessary to 'bring the indicators to life' by explaining their background and justifying the need for them. Without such justification, say the project coordinators, farmers were profoundly uninterested!

So, why should farmers pay any attention to indicators of sustainability? The project coordinators advanced five possible reasons:

• indicators can help farmers notice changes at an early stage and seek advice if required;
• profitability indicators can highlight strengths and weaknesses and show trends;
• land and water quality indicators can highlight natural resource issues which may be 'sleepers' and not obvious to the eye until they are well advanced and difficult to address;
• managerial skills self-auditing can assist individual business partners to appraise honestly their talents and to plan for professional development; and
• off-site impact monitoring can ensure that individual businesses maintain quality standards and do not contribute to problems for the wider community.

Not only for farmers

Indicators can play an important role in regional policymaking and in helping Australia meet its international obligations. They may also prove useful to other groups. For example, the initial response of agribusinesses and educational organisations to the development of a sustainability indicators guide was extremely positive. They saw it as a tool with which to educate staff in sustainable resource management issues.

The end result

The main product of all this work is a recently published booklet: Sustainability indicators for agriculture. It provides information on indicators at two different scales: that relevant to regional/national rural industry policymaking, and that relevant to on-farm management decisions. It is intended as a learning tool by which farmers and others can familiarise themselves with issues relevant to sustainable agriculture.

The booklet is certainly not intended as the last word on sustainable agriculture: it will feed into a wider process of indicator development which itself is only part of the quest for sustainability. But indicators help us to define that buzz-word, sustainability, and to work out what more we need to do to achieve it.