A fuzzy multi-criteria approach for assessing sustainability of Italian farms

This work defines a procedure to assess the socio-economic and environmental sustainability of agricultural systems with a particular attention to conventional and organic farming. Firstly, a mathematical programming model calculates the different multi-dimensional outcomes of Italian farms depending on various levels of prices affecting organic products. Those outcomes are the input data for a fuzzy multi-criteria analysis, which processes the various criteria, takes into account different sets of weights for criteria, and, by a ranking of price scenarios, identifies the most desirable and the least desirable level of prices for five groups of regions. The method adopted proves to be sensitive to geographical location and different perspectives. In particular, when the farmers’ set of weights is adopted, the highest level of prices represents the most desirable scenario in all groups of regions. On the other side, in all other sets of weights, the lowest level of prices seems to be the most preferable scenario for North-Western regions.