Assessment of the sustainability of wild rocket (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) production: Application of a multi-criteria method to different farming systems in the province of Udine

Evaluating the economic, social and environmental impacts of different cultivation systems is an essential issue for the introduction of management practices that aim at both achieving more sustainable forms of land use and improving social well-being. A number of studies compared and assessed organic and conventional farms in relation to their multifunctional effects. However, to our knowledge there is no literature which took into account at the same time the multifunctional role of a greater number of different farming methods. In this paper an attempt is made to employ the multi-criteria method in order to conduct quantitative assessment of the degree of multi-functionality on three different farming methods, namely, conventional, organic and biodynamic. A species of leaf vegetable was considered, that is, wild rocket. The three farms taken into examination are all located in the province of Udine, Italy, with a maximum distance of about 20 km one from another. In all the three farms, greenhouses equipped with the same type of roofing were employed. The research was carried on for two consecutive years, that is, 2012 and 2013; spring, summer and autumn productions were considered. In this way we minimized the influence of some parameters (climatic conditions, luminosity, growing period), but the specific techniques adopted in the three farms were not optimized. The producers continued to utilize the methods usually employed in their farms, in order to obtain results showing the productive situation of the territory. The obtained information was used as input data for the multi-attribute model. Attributes and utility functions were organized under three major groups: economic, social and environmental parameters. Findings may be regarded simply as the results of a pilot study, as they were obtained on a small sample of farms, but suggest that the degree of multi-functionality is the most explicit in the case of the biodynamic farm, that has a better property and social structure.