Assessing the Practical Feasibility of Characterizing the Sustainability of Arable Farms by Measuring and Judging Ecosystem Services

The European Union emphasizes sustainable development on farm level as a basis for future agriculture. This requires a simultaneous focus on economic, social and environmental issues and thus presents a major interdisciplinary challenge to the research community. The case study presented in this paper explores a possible approach linking activities to selected UN-Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on indicators and thresholds for corresponding ecosystem services. The case study shows that methods are available to measure and judge production of healthy food, water quality, greenhouse-gas emissions, biodiversity and soil health, also considering the realization of an adequate income for the farmer. When indicators satisfy their corresponding thresholds, a farm being studied as a Living Lab becomes a Lighthouse that can inspire other farmers working on similar soils. When certain ecosystem services don’t meet their threshold, research can be focused on such services. Framing the work in a SDG context provides an important link to society at large and to the policy arena and can present a quantitative basis for subsidy payments based on provided ecosystem services. Currently, 85% of Dutch farmers apply field testing of soil fertility and this service can be expanded by testing ecosystem services in line with selected SDGs, as explored in the case study. Once all ecosystem services are satisfied, the farmer is free to follow their own unique management practices—an approach that not only respects individual expertise but also stimulates entrepreneurship, as each farmer can pursue the goals in a way that best aligns with his own vision, context, and creativity But such a sustainability-focused program can only be successful when embraced by farmers and methods and procedures should therefore be as simple and transparent as possible while costs should be in line with expected advantages to be obtained.