Sustainability evaluation of complex systems (Part 2): application of a new assessment tool on dairy and beef farms

Six livestock farms, which differ in location, production intensity and environmental vulnerability, were selected to validate a new sustainability evaluation method for complex systems. Three dairy and three beef farms were selected because of the complexity of their production systems. The first implementation phase of the new tool involved evaluating the farms, using a simplified version of the method, with only fifteen sustainability clusters. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out on the same farms to validate the new method and to compare and discuss the obtained results. The new application method classified 4, 28, 44 and 14 sustainability functions of the farms as “negligible”, “medium”, “relevant” and “very relevant”, respectively, and it classified the sustainability of the farms in only two of the four classes: one was classified as being a low sustainability farm and five were classified as being medium-low. The LCA evaluation of the six farms involved in this study showed different results for each index, according to the adopted functional units, while the environmental evaluation results were substantially different from the new method results and were only partially comparable. However, the different results obtained using the two methods should be considered as a positive aspect, as the methods do not overlap and can provide complementary information. Thus, according to these preliminary results, the I-Sustain method could be used to describe the interactions that occur between farm activities and natural, social and economic environments to characterise the sustainable roles of agro-zootechnical production systems.