IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i19p12512-d930806.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analysing the Recent Dynamics of Agricultural Sustainability in Portugal Using a Compromise Programming Approach

Author

Listed:
  • António Xavier

    (CEFAGE (Center for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics), University of Évora, Largo dos Colegiais, 7000-803 Évora, Portugal)

  • Maria de Belém Costa Freitas

    (Sciences and Technology Faculty, MED—Mediterranean Institute for Agriculture, Environment and Development, University of Algarve, Gambelas Campus, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal)

  • Rui Fragoso

    (CEFAGE-UE (Center for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics), Management Department, Universidade de Évora, N° 2, Apt. 95, 7002-554 Evora, Portugal)

  • Maria do Socorro Rosário

    (Direção de Serviços de Estatística, GPP (Gabinete de Planeamento e Políticas), Praça do Comércio, 1149-010 Lisbon, Portugal)

Abstract

Society recognises the importance of agriculture to supply goods, which are essential for human survival and well-being. Sustainable agriculture is an important goal since resources need to be preserved for future generations. The recent agricultural policy orientations towards environmental concerns have also had consequences for Portuguese agriculture. The information provided by the 2019 Agricultural Census offers an opportunity to analyse the recent dynamics and establish rankings of municipalities related to agricultural sustainability. Sustainability in agriculture can be studied using different types of indicators, but its quantification and aggregation into an index is still difficult. This paper proposes an approach based on compromise programming to analyse sustainability considering the dynamics between the 2009 and 2019 Agricultural Census. This approach has three main steps: in the first one, the indicators are selected and a HJ-Biplot and Cluster analysis are carried out to identify groups of municipalities and general dynamics; in the second step, the weights of indicators are defined, and a novel compromise programming model is implemented to define the rankings of sustainability for each year; finally, in the third step, the spatial dynamics of the sustainability rankings are analysed and classified into the clusters of municipalities previously created. The analysis was implemented using data from the 308 Portuguese municipalities for 12 individual indicators encompassing the several dimensions of sustainability. The results were promising since the approach allowed for the identification of the main dynamics and tendencies regarding sustainability.

Suggested Citation

  • António Xavier & Maria de Belém Costa Freitas & Rui Fragoso & Maria do Socorro Rosário, 2022. "Analysing the Recent Dynamics of Agricultural Sustainability in Portugal Using a Compromise Programming Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-16, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:19:p:12512-:d:930806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/19/12512/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/19/12512/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jacinto González-Pachón & Carlos Romero, 2007. "Inferring consensus weights from pairwise comparison matrices without suitable properties," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 123-132, October.
    2. Castela, Eugénia & Galindo, Purificación, 2010. "Ecological Inference for the characterization of electoral turnout: The Portuguese Case," Spatial and Organizational Dynamics Discussion Papers 2010-1, CIEO-Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, University of Algarve.
    3. Diaz-Balteiro, L & González-Pachón, J. & Romero, C., 2017. "Measuring systems sustainability with multi-criteria methods: A critical review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(2), pages 607-616.
    4. Gómez-Limón, José A. & Sanchez-Fernandez, Gabriela, 2010. "Empirical evaluation of agricultural sustainability using composite indicators," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1062-1075, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carrillo, Marianela & Jorge, Jesús M., 2017. "Multidimensional Analysis of Regional Tourism Sustainability in Spain," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 89-98.
    2. Ionuț-Alexandru Spânu & Alexandru Ozunu & Dacinia Crina Petrescu & Ruxandra Malina Petrescu-Mag, 2022. "A Comparative View of Agri-Environmental Indicators and Stakeholders’ Assessment of Their Quality," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-23, March.
    3. Lozano-Oyola, Macarena & Contreras, Ignacio & Blancas, Francisco Javier, 2019. "An Operational Non-compensatory Composite Indicator: Measuring Sustainable Tourism in Andalusian Urban Destinations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 1-10.
    4. Mónica de Castro-Pardo & Fernando Pérez-Rodríguez & José María Martín-Martín & João C. Azevedo, 2019. "Planning for Democracy in Protected Rural Areas: Application of a Voting Method in a Spanish-Portuguese Reserve," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-17, October.
    5. Kun Chen & Gang Kou & J. Michael Tarn & Yan Song, 2015. "Bridging the gap between missing and inconsistent values in eliciting preference from pairwise comparison matrices," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 235(1), pages 155-175, December.
    6. Martín-García, Jaime & Gómez-Limón, José A. & Arriaza, Manuel, 2024. "Conversion to organic farming: Does it change the economic and environmental performance of fruit farms?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    7. Jindřich Špička & Tomáš Vintr & Renata Aulová & Jana Macháčková, 2020. "Trade-off between the economic and environmental sustainability in Czech dual farm structure," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 66(6), pages 243-250.
    8. Anna Gaviglio & Mattia Bertocchi & Maria Elena Marescotti & Eugenio Demartini & Alberto Pirani, 2016. "The social pillar of sustainability: a quantitative approach at the farm level," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-19, December.
    9. Thierry Denœux & Marie-Hélène Masson, 2012. "Evidential reasoning in large partially ordered sets," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 195(1), pages 135-161, May.
    10. Mónica de Castro-Pardo & Pascual Fernández Martínez & Amelia Pérez Zabaleta & João C. Azevedo, 2021. "Dealing with Water Conflicts: A Comprehensive Review of MCDM Approaches to Manage Freshwater Ecosystem Services," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-32, April.
    11. repec:eco:journ2:2017-04-06 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Shamsheer Haq & Ismet Boz, 2020. "Measuring environmental, economic, and social sustainability index of tea farms in Rize Province, Turkey," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 2545-2567, March.
    13. Gerrard, Catherine L. & Padel, Susanne & Simon, Moakes, 2012. "The use of Farm Business Survey data to compare the environmental performance of organic and conventional farms," International Journal of Agricultural Management, Institute of Agricultural Management, vol. 2(1), pages 1-12, October.
    14. António Xavier & Rui Fragoso & Maria Belém Costa Freitas & Maria Socorro Rosário, 2019. "An Approach Using Entropy and Supervised Classifications to Disaggregate Agricultural Data at a Local Level," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 17(4), pages 763-779, December.
    15. Ewa Roszkowska & Bartłomiej Jefmański, 2021. "Interval-Valued Intuitionistic Fuzzy Synthetic Measure (I-VIFSM) Based on Hellwig’s Approach in the Analysis of Survey Data," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-17, January.
    16. Ernest Reig‐Martínez & José A. Gómez‐Limón & Andrés J. Picazo‐Tadeo, 2011. "Ranking farms with a composite indicator of sustainability," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 42(5), pages 561-575, September.
    17. Susana G. Azevedo & Minelle E. Silva & João C. O. Matias & Gustavo P. Dias, 2018. "The Influence of Collaboration Initiatives on the Sustainability of the Cashew Supply Chain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-29, June.
    18. Ranjan Roy & Ngai Weng Chan, 2012. "An assessment of agricultural sustainability indicators in Bangladesh: review and synthesis," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 99-110, March.
    19. Stylianou, Andreas & Sdrali, Despina & Apostolopoulos, Constantinos D., 2020. "Capturing the diversity of Mediterranean farming systems prior to their sustainability assessment: The case of Cyprus," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    20. Franz Sinabell, 2014. "Eine Auswahl von Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren für die österreichische Land- und Forstwirtschaft im internationalen Vergleich," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47124, April.
    21. Seyit Ali Erdogan & Jonas Šaparauskas & Zenonas Turskis, 2019. "A Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model to Choose the Best Option for Sustainable Construction Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-19, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:19:p:12512-:d:930806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.