Collaboratrici e collaboratori

Purpose Food production along the entire value chain aims to be as sustainable as possible for all three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental). Detailed quantitative information about the sustainability of the farm’s primary production can be obtained by the use of a set of indicators. Methods The sustainability method SALCAsustain, as described in Roesch et al. (2017) was applied under real-time conditions on typical Swiss farms for two years (2016 and 2018) of operation. The method computed 21 indicators (13 environmental impacts, six economic indicators and two social indicators) which were analysed statistically. A reduced set of indicators were presented to the participating farmers. In addition, feedback interviews were conducted to gain more insight into feasibility, use and acceptance of the applied method. Results The correlation analysis carried out showed that the number of environmental indicators may be reduced. In view of the time-consuming data collection this fact could represent a simplification. The evaluation of the questionnaires pointed out that sustainability is important, especially the economic dimension. The evaluation showed that mid- and longterm benefits prevail for farmers when assessing the farm's overall sustainability using SALCAsustain. Conclusions Sustainability assessment has shown to be highly relevant at the farm-level but also for food production along the entire value chain. For a large number of farms an implementation of such a sustainability method would be only possible with further digital data acquisition, with a reduction of the indicators or the use of default values.