A Review of Farm Level Inidcators of Sustainability with a Focus on CAP and FADN

The agricultural sector has a strong role to play in achieving the goal of 'Sustainable growth: promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy' listed in the Europe 2020 strategy. From a policy perspective, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is likely to be a driver of sustainability as it has progressively introduced more environmental and social concerns within the various CAP reforms. In this context, we provide here a review of sustainable indicators for agriculture. Not only do we review the international literature, but we also provide a synthesis of several national initiatives of farm sustainability assessment in the nine partner countries of the FLINT project: Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. Although no consensus has yet been reached in terms of the operational meaning of sustainability, we consider here that sustainable development aims at preserving or enlarging our capital stock which includes the economic capital, the social capital and the natural capital. The review particularly focuses on indicators at the farm level. The farm level is a relevant scale at which to assess sustainability, as farm management decisions may directly impact farm sustainability. Further, the farm level approach increases the spatial accuracy, which is highlighted as a main challenge in other quantification approaches. Finally, the farm is the legal unit for legislation purposes and the economic unit that receives payments for externalities within the CAP framework and as such is the level at which most policies are directed.