Influence of methodological choices in farm sustainability assessments: A word of caution from a case study analysis of European dairy farms

In a context where sustainability assessments are increasingly popular, this perspective article discusses the influence of methodological choices on measurements of farm sustainability. We build the argumentation on the premises that sustainability is a multi-dimensional concept that can be measured through an indicator approach and use examples from a case study analysis of seven European dairy farms. Specifically, the article demonstrates how and why indicator selection, estimation methods, and reporting frameworks can influence measured performance and thereby affect wider sustainability conclusions about production systems and practice change. Overall, we highlight that while in practical terms, methodological choices are necessary to conduct a farm sustainability assessment, important limitations can arise from the process. Of particular concern are farm conclusions and recommendations that lead to perverse outcomes and generate further sustainability issues outside of study scope. Practical guidance is provided to aid methodological choices with a more comprehensive and critical view of farm sustainability assessments. Importantly, we call for a more upfront recognition of methodological shortcomings in farm analyses.

This research was funded under the 2018 Joint Call of the Cofund ERA-Nets FACCE ERA-GAS [grant number 696356], SusAn [grant number 696231], and ICT-AGRI 2 [grant number 618123] on \u201CNovel technologies, solutions and systems to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in animal production systems\u201D. The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of their national funding agencies: the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine [grant number 2019EN201]; the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) [grant number ANR-19-SUGA-0003]; the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) through the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) [grant number 2819ERA08A]; and the Polish National Centre for Research and Development (Narodowe Centrum Bada\u0144 i Rozwoju) [grant number SUSAN / II / MILKEY / 02/2020]. Agust\u00EDn del Prado (BC3) is funded by the Ramon y Cajal programme from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-22143) and by Ikerbasque \u2013 Basque Foundation for Science. BC3 acknowledges financial support by the Spanish Government through Mar\u00EDa de Maeztu excellence accreditation 2023-2026 (Ref. CEX2021-001201-M, funded by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033) and the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2024 programme. Finally, the authors acknowledge the help of Elisabeth Castellan (IDELE), Habtamu Alem (NIBIO), and Grete J\u00F8rgensen (NIBIO) in collecting the data used in this article.