Abstract
In Quebec, over the last two decades, the number of dairy farms has declined, and the sustainability of the family farms and their rural communities has been questioned. In order to be sustainable, a farm should be viable, liveable, transmissible and ecologically reproducible. Thus, the assessment of farm sustainability should be based on its economic, environmental and social aspects. A holistic method, named DELTA, was developed for the three aspects: environmental, technical-economic and social. To identify the indicators, we used a multiple stakeholder perspective (researchers, farmers, advisors). We report on the 20 social indicators that were selected and grouped in four components: quality of life, social integration, farm succession and entrepreneurial skills. Results are presented as a radar diagram for each farm with axis representing indicators. Each indicator was validated on 40 farms. This new assessment tool will serve to evaluate the sustainability of a farm at a given point in time and could be used periodically to follow its evolution over the years.
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Acknowledgements
The research team wishes to thank the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT) for the grant and NOVALAIT for the doctoral student’s scholarship received by Valérie Bélanger.
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Parent, D., Bélanger, V., Vanasse, A., Allard, G., Pellerin, D. (2013). Method for the Evaluation of Farm Sustainability in Quebec, Canada: The Social Aspect. In: Marta-Costa, A., Soares da Silva, E. (eds) Methods and Procedures for Building Sustainable Farming Systems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5003-6_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5003-6_16
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