Suchergebnisse

Social performance is the pillar of sustainability that is the most often neglected, compared to the evaluation of environmental and economic performances of farming systems. Farmers' working conditions are rarely studied. To understand farmers' working conditions and to assess them, it is necessary to develop a multicriteria approach including not only quantifiable dimensions (e.g., the length of working days) but also dimensions that can explain how working conditions are experienced by workers (e.g., by understanding farmer's reasons for acting). Multiple factors contribute to determine farmers' working conditions such as the composition of the workforce, the region, but also the degree of uptake of ecological practices. This deliverable contributes to knowledge on this issue, explaining the work carried out in task 3.3 of the LIFT project. The main objectives of task 3.3 were: i) to describe farmers' and farm workers' working conditions in different farming systems characterised by different degrees of uptake or ecological practices and; ii) to identify factors explaining these working conditions (degree of uptake of ecological practices, workforce composition, country, etc.). To achieve these objectives, a set of indicators on working conditions was selected in a two-step approach: firstly, a theoretical basis from the literature, and, secondly, expert knowledge in the LIFT partners. Primary data was collected during interviews with 160 farmers in five European Union (EU) regions (Brittany in France, Puy-de-Dôme in France, Crete in Greece, Ireland, Salzburg area in Austria, Umgebung Steyr-Kirchdorf in Austria). Statistical analysis was conducted to describe the diversity of indicators (working conditions, workforce composition and farm structure) within the whole sample and in the different case study areas. A principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out on working condition indicators, using farms with complete data (123 farms). Farm characteristics and workforce composition indicators were shown on ...

This document presents the results of Task 3.2 (farm technical-economic performance) in workpackage (WP) 3 (farm performance of ecological agriculture) of the LIFT project. The overall aim of Task 3.2 is to assess and compare technical-economic farm performance across the European Union (EU) depending on the degree of ecological approaches adopted by farms and analyse drivers, affecting their performance. This requires an approach, which allows to consider regional specifics, while still allowing comparisons between different regions and countries. The deliverable thus consists of several academic papers, focussing on a range of different case studies, applying a wide range of methods, which can most generally be divided into empirical econometric approaches and bio-economic models. At the same time, all case studies follow a similar structure and include some common elements in terms of the applied methods, in particular a set of common indicators of technical-economic farm performance was implemented in several papers. Various approaches to differentiate farms according to the degree of ecological approaches adopted were explored, including the LIFT farm typology developed in WP1 and other strategies. Overall, our results show that the wide variety of farm types and biophysical, socio-economic and political framework conditions present in the EU matter: results of comparing technical-economic farm performance depending on the degree of ecological approaches adopted, as well as with respect to drivers of farm technical-economic performance, are heterogenous and vary between the different analyses. Therefore, this heterogeneity needs to be considered by policy makers and can most likely best be addressed by providing a policy framework, which provides the necessary flexibility to adjust measures to region-specific framework conditions in order to foster economic viability of farms in the context of an ecological transition of EU agriculture. Building on the results of this deliverable and the other deliverables ...