Scholarly record
TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: BRIDGING ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE AND ECONOMIC VIABILITY
Abstract
The transition to sustainable agriculture in Europe depends on farming systems that are not only environmentally sound but also economically viable and measurable. Meeting the targets of the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy requires tools that translate sustainability into quantifiable, comparable, and actionable data at the farm level. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one way that offers this capacity, yet methodological gaps and data limitations continue to constrain its wider use. This study investigates, through an environmental and economic lens, what priorities and conditions are necessary to make sustainable agriculture through the use of LCA a genuinely effective instrument. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to illustrate the assessment of three criteria groups, economic priorities, environmental priorities, and gaps in current LCA methodologies, by three improvement scenarios: better access to sustainability-linked financing; the digital transformation and tech integration; and the concentration of policy incentives and regulatory support. Five international experts in sustainable agriculture from higher education institutions in Northern, Western, and Baltic Europe regions were involved in the study. The analyses show that the top-rated criteria group was economic priorities, closely followed by gaps in LCA methodologies, while environmental priorities ranked third, illustrating the view that economic viability is a condition for environmental adoption. Policy support was ranked as the main impactful scenario overall, followed by better access to sustainability-linked, and then by digital transformation.
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References16
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