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Creating a farmer sustainability index: A Malaysian case study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2009

Donald C. Taylor ,
Zainal Abidin Mohamed ,
Mad Nasir Shamsudin ,
Mohd Ghazali Mohayidin  and
Eddie F.C. Chiew
Donald C. Taylor
Affiliation:
Professor of Agricultural Economics, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 57007.
Zainal Abidin Mohamed
Affiliation:
Professor of Agricultural Economics, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 57007.
Mad Nasir Shamsudin
Affiliation:
Professor of Agricultural Economics, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 57007.
Mohd Ghazali Mohayidin
Affiliation:
Professor of Agricultural Economics, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 57007.
Eddie F.C. Chiew
Affiliation:
Professor of Agricultural Economics, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 57007.
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Abstract

In on-farm studies of sustainable agriculture, farmers often have been classified as sustainable according to their organizational affiliation; self identification; or use or non-use of a particular production practice or input, usually synthetic chemicals. Because this is a great oversimplification, researchers recently have been incorporating several dimensions of sustainability into a composite measure. Typically this is a relative measure of sustainability, with scores assigned by comparing individual farmers' practices to those used by all farmers. In contrast, in the farmer sustainability index (FSI) presented here, practices are scored according to their inherent sustainability. We report on the development of an FSI in a case study involving 33 production practices used by 85 cabbage farmers in Malaysia. We describe its underlying principles, the procedure and rationale for scoring each sustainability item, and the result of combining the constituent items into a composite index.

Keywords

integrated pest managementMalaysiacabbagediamondback mothsoil fertility
Type
Other Feature Articles
Information
American Journal of Alternative Agriculture , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 175 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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