The environmental sustainability of national cropping systems: From assessment to policy impact evaluation.

The European political framework of the last decade aims to drive agriculture towards economic and environmental sustainability. Thus, European institutions have paid great attention to environmental impact assessment and to the definition of a complex indicator capable of restoring the multidimensional nature of environmental sustainability. In this work, a possible methodology for assessing the environmental sustainability of European national cropping systems by a synthetic indicator is provided. More specifically, the environmental impact of agriculture is assessed through a synthetic indicator, whose definition is based on a methodological improvement of the ecological footprint approach, which quantifies the balance between exploitation and availability of natural resources used in agriculture. The analysis shows how national cropping systems can contribute to Europe’s environmental impact through agriculture. To assess an eventual relationship between agriculture’s environmental performance and the ability to support more sustainable agriculture at the national level, the results are then compared with the subsidies for agro-environmental measures provided by the second pillar of the CAP. In addition, the synthetic indicator chosen for the study, giving the possibility of quantifying the dynamic of the environmental impact of agriculture between two different periods, permits the analysis of the possible causes that may have generated the observed changes. The implications of this approach should stimulate new reflections on the significance of the ecological relationships embodied into agricultural production and the environmental role of farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]