An integrated environmental accounting framework to evaluate the sustainability of olive production systems in Apulia Region: A farm and Field Analysis

From several years there is a need for Agro-environmental schemes including tools to evaluate impacts on environment and performances of farming practices. Schemes used have not been always effective in both environmental and economical point of view. In these conditions, it was necessary to establish a measuring method that includes environmental and financial indicators. The set of the environmental indicators used in this method is called Environmental Accounting Information System (EAIS). Some economical indicators are integrated with EAIS. The environmental accounting framework is aimed to establish a set of indicators and their processing methods for assessing the agricultural activity performance. This set of indicators have to be site specific because the impacts of the agricultural activity are strongly dependent on local conditions like pedo-climatic and social ones. The spatial boundaries of environmental (ecological) accounting system (EAS=EAIS) are those of the farm agro-ecosystem and the temporal limits are one year in order to fit to the one year-period of the financial accountancy. The authors in this case do an analogy between EAIS and the balance sheet and the income statement in a financial accountancy. Balance sheet is assessed once a year. Changes between two balance assessments are reported in the environmental profit-loss account and corresponds with the flows of the environmental capital during the year. The framework is implemented in the South of Italy, in Apulia region. It considers the Integrated Environmental Accounting Information System in the pedo-climatic conditions of olive-growers of Ostuni municipality. The study is performed on two olive-growing farms, one organic and the other conventional, situated on the same place. A field, site and farm scale analysis, is performed. Work results consists of two different things: a tool to evaluate sustainability performance in South Italy conditions and the analyses of sustainability performance on compared farm systems. So Indicators are chosen depend on critical point presented by the two different farm conditions, that are the factors hamper the farm management or that can deteriorate the environment and natural resources. A good attention was paid on the methods used for assessment of the indicators in order they to be practical and easy to be adapted by the farmers too. Using EAIS is necessary to have a recording data system, a set of environmental performance indicators for the evaluation of the farm externalities and an estimation of the farm environmental capital. A set of methods for the calculation of the indicators from the recorded data have to be used. The indicators included and calculated in this study are compared for their performance with thresholds found in the literature. At the end, a performance assessment for the farm sustainability is done.