LIFT farm typology developed, tested and revised, and recommendations on data needs
Creators: name: Rega, Carlo
name: Thompson, Bethan
name: D'Alberto, Riccardo
name: Niedermayr, Andreas
name: Kantelhardt, Jochen
name: Gouta, Penelope
name: Konstantidelli, Vasilia
name: Tzouramani, Irene
name: Desjeux, Yann
name: Latruffe, Laure
name: Billaudet, Larissa
name: Paracchini, Maria Luisa
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021

description: This Deliverable 1.4 (D1.4) presents the final version of the LIFT farm typology developed in WP1, together with a system of rules to assign individual farms to one or more of the categories defined in Deliverable 1.1 (Rega et al., 2018). These sets of rules, together with the set of data on farming practices to which they apply, have been named “Protocols”. The typology is defined as a combination of two main elements: type of farm and farming approach. The type of farm characterises the farm in terms of main production and specialisation and uses the nomenclature defined by Eurostat. The farming approach is a classification applicable to individual holdings based on their type of management, assessed from an ecological perspective. Classifying farms according to a defined typology is a necessary step in LIFT project, in order to carry out subsequent statistical analyses and investigate drivers and obstacles in determining the adoption of ecological farming practices, or to study environmental performances vis a vis other socio-economic aspects. Farming approaches have been identified considering four main ecological dimensions of farming: i) soil conservation; ii) overall input intensity; iii) internal integration and circularity; iv) ecological infrastructure. Building on these, six main farming approaches have been defined: 1) Standard farming; 2) Conservation agriculture; 3) Low-input farming; 4) Integrated/Circular farming; 5) Organic farming; 6) Agroecological farming. Standard farming is mutually exclusive with respect to the other five farming approaches, while the latter are not mutually exclusive. The protocols are devised as scoring systems whereby individual farms are assigned scores based on a set of examined items. Two main protocols have been developed, one based on microdata from the Farm Accountancy Data Network - FADN (FADN-based protocol) and one using the LIFT large-scale farmer survey (Survey-based protocol). In the FADN-based protocol, considered variables mainly represent costs incurred by farmers for different production inputs. Original FADN data were processed to make them comparable across countries and time by using Eurostat official adjustment coefficients for inflation and price levels across countries. Scores are based on the values that adjusted variables at the individual farm level assume, based on the range and distribution of such values in farms belonging to the same farm type across the entire European Union (EU). In the Survey-based protocol, a set of items from the LIFT large-scale farmer survey representing the level of adoption of farming practices are assessed using expert-based scores. Individual scores are then combined through a system of rules and weights to obtain final synthetic scores for each of the above mentioned farming approaches. The FADN-based protocol allows to assess the belonging of individual holdings to Low-Input farming, Integrated/circular farming, Organic farming and, based on these, on Agroecological farming. The Survey-based protocol enables to evaluate with greater detail the belonging to each farming approach and their combination. The developed protocols here are the results of an interactive and iterative approach where feedback from the pilot application of earlier versions by project partners were used to incrementally refine the protocol. The work on the FADN data also led to the identification of the main data gaps currently present in this database with regard to its use as an environmental sustainability evaluation tool. Suggestions to improve it are made, in the framework of its proposed transformation into a Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN).