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This indicator measures progress in achieving productive and sustainable agriculture.

This indicator focuses on agricultural land, and therefore primarily on land that is used to grow crops and raise livestock. This choice of scope is fully consistent with the intended use of a country’s agricultural area as the denominator of the aggregate indicator.

Ministry of Agriculture

Ministry of Agriculture

Triennial  

National Value

This indicator is expected to be collected through farm surveys and the result expressed as a national value.

Sustainable agriculture can be considered as: “The management and conservation of the natural resource base, and the orientation of technological and institutional change in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generation. Such development (in agriculture, forestry and fishing etc.) conserves land, water, plant and animal genetic resources, environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable.” (FAO, 1988)

FAO described a vision based on five principles applicable across five sectors: crops, livestock, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries. The five principles (FAO, 2014) are:

• Improving efficiency in the use of resources is crucial to sustainable agriculture.
• Sustainability requires direct action to conserve, protect and enhance natural resources
• Agriculture that fails to protect and improve rural livelihoods, equity and social well-being is unsustainable
• Enhanced resilience of people, communities and ecosystems is key to sustainable agriculture
• Sustainable food and agriculture require responsible and effective governance mechanisms.

by type of farming system (crop, livestock or mixed) and other characteristics of the farm e.g. size, or gender of the farm holder.

This indicator is expressed by the following formula:

This implies the need to measure both the extent of land under productive and sustainable agriculture (the numerator), as well as the extent of land area under agriculture (the denominator).

The numerator captures the three dimensions of sustainable production: environmental, economic and social. It corresponds to agricultural area of the farms that satisfy sub-indicators selected across all three dimensions.

The denominator is agricultural land area managed by agricultural holdings, defined as the sum of agricultural area utilized by agricultural holdings that are owned (excluding rented-out), rented-in, leased, sharecropped or borrowed.

Productive and sustainable use of agricultural land will ensure that supplies of crops and natural resources are available to the current population and future generations.  Harmful, unsustainable agricultural practices from extractive industries, large-scale food producers, and local farmers can pose significant risks to people and the environment.  By addressing sustainability across its three dimensions, countries can select those metrics within their measurement instrument that best capture the priorities most relevant to them and improve countries’ capacities to produce agricultural and rural statistics in support to more effective food security and agricultural and rural development policies.

The sub-themes under the social dimension are usually best captured through household surveys. While in the majority of cases agricultural holdings are closely associated with a given household, this is not always the case, and therefore capturing the social dimension of sustainability through a farm survey could pose certain challenges.

All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.