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Multicriteria Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2022) | Viewed by 7927

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Črtomir Rozman

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Guest Editor

Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Maribor, Pivola 10, 2311 Hoče, Slovenia
Interests: decision support; multicriteria analysis; simulation; farm management; environmental impact assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Karmen Pažek

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Guest Editor

Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Science, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
Interests: option modeling; multicriteria analysis; project appraisal; farm management; decision support

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to submit your papers to the Special Issue “Multicriteria Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture”.

(1) Sustainable agriculture aims to satisfy the present society’s requirements for food while ensuring income stability for farmers without compromising the ability of future generations to use resources. Management in sustainable agriculture on farms as well at the policy level is therefore complex and deals with decision making with multiple conflicting goals and, in most cases, is also related to satisfying the needs of multiple stakeholders with different goals. Multicriteria analysis (MCA) has therefore emerged as a suitable methodological solution for these kinds of decision and assessment problems. Many formal methods of MCA have been developed (Saaty’s analytical hierarchical process, ELECTRE, DEX, etc.) and a review of the literature shows their possibilities for use in agricultural decision making or assessment problems.

(2) The aim of the Special Issue “Multicriteria Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture” is to present papers dealing with applications of multicriteria analysis with special emphasis on decision making and assessment in sustainable agriculture in addition to highlighting the present state and perspectives of theory and practice of decision assessments in sustainable agriculture based on multicriteria modeling. Methodological papers and cases studies are also welcome. The Guest Editors hope that the papers presented within will portray the state-of-the-art in research efforts over the world devoted to complex decision problems in the area of sustainable agriculture.

Prof. Dr. Črtomir Rozman
Prof. Dr. Karmen Pažek
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

decision making
multicriteria decision making
farm management
sustainable agriculture

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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15 pages, 1496 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Study on the Sustainable Development Factors of Agriculture-Oriented Characteristic Towns in China

by Meijun Hu, Lei Wang, Wei Wang, Lingyun Tong and Yuqin Lin

Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12292; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912292 - 27 Sep 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 984

Abstract

In recent years, China’s agriculture-oriented characteristic towns (AOCTs) have developed rapidly. However, the development of AOCTs in different regions varies. Having examined 131 AOCTs in China, this paper constructs a comprehensive evaluation system for the sustainable development of AOCTs and applies a sub-constraint evaluation model to study the performance of AOCTs. The main findings are as follows. (1) The most important dimension for the sustainable development of AOCTs is “social development”, which implies that in order to build AOCTs, the government should pay attention to social development in rural areas, especially improving medical services and public service. (2) Under the dimension of “social development”, the three most important factors are the unemployment rate, per capita consumption expenditures of rural households, and per capita consumption expenditures of urban households. This implies that we must adhere to the policy for ensuring rural employment and encourage the development of local enterprises in order to provide more jobs and change their existing consumption structure. (3) Among the four main economic zones in China, the eastern region has the most advantageous factors, and the western region has the least; furthermore, regarding the disadvantaged factors, the western region has the most and the eastern region the least. This shows that AOCTs in different regions should determine their respective advantages and disadvantages, match resources accordingly, and formulate their own development strategy, which could also contribute to decreasing the gap between the eastern and western regions. Hence, the results of this study not only clearly point out the important factors for the sustainable development of AOCTs but also make them detailed and specific in order to provide the government with targeted and highly operable suggestions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multicriteria Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture)

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9 pages, 5990 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of Traditional and Indigenous Horse Breeds for Wider Intended Use: Case Study from Slovenia

by Jernej Prišenk, Nina Filipič, Črtomir Rozman, Karmen Pažek and Jernej Turk

Sustainability 2022, 14(4), 1971; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14041971 - 09 Feb 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1928

Abstract

In this work, a new multi-criteria model for the evaluation of traditional and indigenous horse breeds, the HORQUAL model, was developed by applying the DEX (Decision Expert) method. The idea for this study culminated from brainstorming among researchers who had the importance of conserving traditional and indigenous horse breeds in Slovenia and their universal uses (recreative and sport) in mind. The conservation of native domestic animal breeds is one of the important indicators of sustainable agricultural development in particular countries. Here, the assessment process considered the horse breeds in terms of lifestyle, expectations, requirements and experiences. The development process was based on the multi-criteria decision analysis approach, and it was applied to seven traditional and indigenous Slovenian horse breeds. The horse breeds were classified into four groups of breed ratings according to the chosen criteria. The horse breeds were categorised as follows: “does not correspond to the criteria”, “less correspondence with the criteria”, “corresponds to the criteria” and “completely corresponds to the criteria”. The results of the HORQUAL model clearly show that it is easier and more effective to choose the most suitable breeds for specific purposes (i.e., recreative/sport horses with the potential for breeding along with acceptable costs, favourable temperament and suitable price) as they can easily be analysed or compared with each other, according to the criteria chosen in this paper. The rating by group takes the criteria for the multi-attribute evaluation that were identified by an expert group into account and balances between the assessment of recreational and sports needs for riders and the life expectancy for breeders. Additionally, incorporating the Plus-minus-1 analysis proved to be a useful support tool to analyse the assessments and to further improve horse breeding plans. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multicriteria Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture)

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19 pages, 7374 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Introducing the SWOT Scorecard Technique to Analyse Diversified AE Collective Schemes with a DEX Model

by Janja Rudolf and Andrej Udovč

Sustainability 2022, 14(2), 785; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14020785 - 11 Jan 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2117

Abstract

Comparing diversified agri-environmental (AE) collective schemes in their capability to provide AE public goods faces great challenges, mostly because of their diversified nature and relatively new way to approach the provision of AE public goods. The state of the art is that there are not yet any common quantitative indicators or data to build a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to compare it with other practices and to set the strategic plan for the scheme’s improvement. Nevertheless, some qualitative common data of SWOT analyses are available, but the question remains how to simultaneously compare several SWOT analyses in an MCDM model. This study introduces a new way of transforming the qualitative results of SWOT analyses to fit in the MCDM Decision Expert (DEX) model using a special transformation technique SWOT scorecard. The SWOT scorecard evaluates the importance of qualitative results of several SWOT analyses simultaneously in a quantitative way, describing with points how supportive the environment is to each criterion in the DEX model. The SWOT scorecard keeps track of the original results from SWOT analysis and considers the diversity of AE schemes, which results in an appearance of the convergence points. This gives a key for comparing the AE collective schemes in providing AE public goods. Furthermore, it gives a solution for discussing the synergy between aspects that affect AE public goods provision for every AE scheme investigated. The technique is tested via five AE collective schemes in the DEXi program and gives deeper insight into factors that affect each scheme’s performance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multicriteria Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture)

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Review

Jump to: Research

18 pages, 2992 KiB

Open AccessReview

Sustainable Agricultural Development Assessment: A Comprehensive Review and Bibliometric Analysis

by Shu Yu and Yongtong Mu

Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 11824; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su141911824 - 20 Sep 2022

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 1927

Abstract

This study used a bibliometric analysis of 110 scientific papers published between 2002 and 2022 to overview the publication trends and growth potential of sustainable agricultural development assessment studies. The findings showed that the collaboration between authors and institutions was not strong, the journals published were relatively scattered, the coverage of disciplines was wide, more papers were published in higher impact journals, and the authors of the sample articles were mostly from Asian and European countries, the co-citation analysis pointed out more influential authors and journals. The temporal evolution of the keywords identified that researchers focused more on the sustainable operation of agriculture and the methods to assess the degree of sustainability initially, as research progressed and more scientific methods were applied, recent agricultural sustainability research focused on environmental impacts and economic efficiency. According to statistical analysis, the primary level is mostly carried out in three dimensions (economic, social, and environmental), with reference to this principle, this paper summarized the specific indicators appearing in the sample articles and divided them into three subgroups. The results showed that the indicators were selected from a wide range of sources, the entropy weight method and Analytic Hierarchy Process were the most frequent methods of assigning weights to indicators. The present study concludes that the sustainable agricultural development assessment studies are still immature, there is still much room for research on the application of sustainability assessment theory to agrarian systems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multicriteria Assessment for Sustainable Agriculture)

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