Sustainability in the Case of Small Vegetable Farmers: A Matrix Approach

Ioan Bruma, Simona-Roxana Ulman, Cristina Cautisanu, Lucian Tanasă and Gabriel Vasile Hoha
Additional contact information
Simona-Roxana Ulman: CERNESIM Environmental Research Center, Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, 700505 Iasi, Romania
Cristina Cautisanu: CERNESIM Environmental Research Center, Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, 700505 Iasi, Romania
Lucian Tanasă: Romanian Academy, “Gh. Zane” Institute for Economic and Social Research, 700481 Iasi, Romania
Gabriel Vasile Hoha: Faculty of Food and Animal Sciences, “Ion Ionescu de la Brad“ Iasi University of Life Sciences, 700490 Iasi, Romania

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 18, 1-32

Abstract: Considering that sustainability is a relative concept, but also that this limitation could be avoided through continuous adaptation of the evaluation tools by taking into account the directions of change (such as time, space, application domain), the goal of the present study is to elaborate a matrix for measuring the level of sustainability for small vegetable farms. Thus, looking at what sustainability could represent under such circumstances, we divided its characteristics into four main dimensions (economic, social, environmental, cultural), while adding the private dimension. Inclusion of the private dimension may provide potential added value to this study, and thus enrich the general perspective of producers’ capacity to meet the sustainability goals in their entrepreneurial activity. To quantify these five dimensions of the sustainability matrix, a questionnaire was built up and used as support for face-to-face interviews conducted at the level of the North-East Development Region of Romania. Our results showed associations between diverse components of the dimensions considered, revealing their synergy in farm activity, along with the occurrence of some differences in the levels of sustainability dimensions and sub-dimensions, which differ as a function of the specific types of vegetable production (conventional, ecologic, natural, mixed).

Keywords: sustainability matrix; economic; social; environmental; cultural; private dimensions; vegetable small farmers; conventional; organic; natural production system; North-East Region of Romania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10320/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10320/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:18:p:10320-:d:636126

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().