Wednesday 16 July 2014

Link to SAI: Sustainability Performance Assessment

Sustainability Performance Assessment (v2.0): Towards Consistent Measurement of Sustainability at Farm Level

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI Platform) is a food and drink company initiative supporting the development of sustainable agriculture worldwide. It brings together over 55 food and drink companies and affiliate members. More information can be found at www.saiplatform.org

Here, I provide some links to resources provided by the SAI platform.

Tuesday 15 July 2014

PhD thesis online: ecosystem function in grasslands


Congratulations to Simon Taugourdeau on his PhD thesis from the Université de Lorraine:

"Effects of management and climate on the plant functional diversity related to ecosystem services of permanent grasslands in Europe"

Simon’s thesis is available online

https://filex.univ-lorraine.fr/get?k=IoINlZMXtsTjOB6W3Y9








Friday 11 July 2014

EU project on farm sustainability: FLINT

FLINT: Farm Level Indicators for New policy Topics

Teagasc is a member of the EU FP7 FLINT project. Our role in Work Package 1 is to develop policy-relevant farm-level indicators of social, economic and environmental indicators, for implementation in a survey of a European network of about 1,000 farms.

FLINT will also provide a data-infrastructure needed by the agro-food sector and policy makers to provide up to date information on farm level indicators on sustainability and other relevant new issues. The ultimate aim is to develop a farm-level approach to collect and co-ordinate data in a way that may inform future initiatives to monitor the effects of agricutlural policies.

Better decision making will be facilitated by taking into account the sustainability performance of farms on a wide range of relevant topics, such as
(1) market stabilization;
(2) income support;
(3) environmental sustainability;
(4) climate change adaptation and mitigation;
(5) innovation; and
(6) resource efficiency.

The approach will explicitly consider the heterogeneity of the farming sector in the EU and its member states. Together with the farming and agro-food sector the feasibility of these indicators will be determined.

For further information, see the project website at FLINT