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Abstract
As policy makers, taxpayers and consumers are willing to know the actual contribution of farming to natural and social
environment, sustainability and sustainable development arose as key issues in public debates. Sustainability is a
multifaceted concept that includes environmental, economic and social objectives and policy makers need information
to take effective decisions. Analysts should rank decisional units according to sustainability criteria and should offer to
policy makers more and more insights on the different points of view behind the three dimensions of sustainability.
Within the current FADN database sustainability indicators have been identified. In some cases estimations have been
necessary and in some other cases thanks to allocation of costs (crop protection and fertilizers), to the registration of
physical information (quantities of fertilizers) and to other details assembled with the Italian methodology (irrigation
system, socio-demographic information) indicators have been directly derived. Starting from a multi-criteria matrix a
Sustainability Farm Index (SuFI) has been calculated at farm level. The methodology has been applied to the regional
FADN sample of Veneto of 2009. The current FADN database has demonstrated to be a valuable source of information
to monitor the environmental and social farm assets, beside the economic one. However, additional informative
modules seem necessary to integrate the current set of information in order to describe comprehensively the
environmental and social aspects of agricultural holdings in the context of the assessment of sustainable development.