Abstract
Sustainability assessment of agri-food-systems is becoming increasingly important due to growing negative environmental, social, and economic impacts of food production. Organic agriculture is often considered to play a key role in improving the sustainability of agri-food systems. This study contrasts the results of a comprehensive sustainability assessment of Austrian organic farms with those predicted by a sustainability assessment model of conventional production. A stratified random sampling procedure was applied to select 245 organic farms for sustainability assessment using the SMART farm tool based on the SAFA guidelines of the FAO. Comparison data from conventional production were based on expert interviews, statistical data, and scientific literature and calculated using a Monte Carlo uncertainty simulation. The achievement of the sustainability goals was measured in percentages—between 0 and 100%. The results highlight the consistently good ecological sustainability performance of organic farms in the areas of atmosphere, water, soil, biodiversity, materials and energy, and animal welfare. For the relevant sub-themes, 85.3% of the median values were rated above 60% of goal achievement. Conversely, results from the comparison highlight the significantly lower ecological sustainability performance of conventional farms in most of the ecological sub-themes. The most significant differences were evident for poultry production, pig fattening production, and storable vegetable production. The consistently better ecological sustainability performance of the surveyed organic farms in Austria points to their potential for reducing the negative ecological impacts of agriculture and food production while enhancing ecological sustainability.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy protection but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank all organic farmers who were involved in the survey and made their data available. Furthermore, we thank the Werner Lampert Beratungsges.mbH and the Hofer KG for facilitating access to farmers and data collection. The authors gratefully acknowledge all advisors and scientists for participating in the expert interviews. Special thanks go to Rainer Weißhaidinger and also to Christian Schader, Michael Curran, and Silvia Marton for their valuable contribution to project administration, methodological preparation, and project realization. Thanks go to all auditors for conducting the on-farm interviews: Ruth Bartel-Kratochvil, Magdalena Breuer, Jakob Gadermaier, Theresa Gams, Stefan Hörtenhuber, Thomas Labuda, Alexandra Pfingstmann, Magdalena Scheuch, Anja Scheurich, and Stefan Schweiger.
Funding
The supermarket chain Hofer KG funded data collection on organic farms for sustainability assessment from 2017 to 2019. The Austrian organic farmers’ association Bio Austria funded data analysis and comparison between organic and conventional production in 2021 for publication.
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Friedrich Leitgeb (F.L.), Richard Petrasek (R.P.), Thomas Drapela (T.D.), Thomas Lindenthal (T.L.)
Conceptualization, F.L., R.P.,T.L.; methodology, R.P., T.D.; validation, F.L., R.P., T.D., T.L.; formal analysis, F.L., R.P., T.D.; investigation, R.P., T.D., F.L.; resources, R.P., T.L.; data curation, R.P., T.D., F.L.; writing—original draft preparation, F.L., R.P., T.D., T.L.; writing—review and editing, F.L., R.P., T.D., T.L.; visualization, T.D., R.P.; supervision, R.P., T.L.; project administration, R.P.; funding acquisition, R.P., T.L. All the authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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The selected farmers participated voluntarily and under prior informed consent in the assessment. Interviewers guaranteed data protection and anonymous processing of farm data and no individual farm data was passed on to the project contractor. Only the aggregated results were delivered to the project contractor, together with a synthesis report containing background information on data interpretation.
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Leitgeb, F., Petrasek, R., Drapela, T. et al. Comparing the ecological sustainability performance of organic farms and conventional production in Austria using the SMART farm tool and Monte Carlo simulation. Org. Agr. 13, 173–191 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13165-022-00419-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13165-022-00419-w