The evolution of agricultural practices and the technological advancements involved is a story of doing more with less. But as our assessment tools, certification schemes and policy frameworks have multiplied, it is worth asking whether this administrative and regulatory complexity is serving the people who farm the land, in the way we intended.

The Green Revolution in the 1960s kickstarted the transformation of how modern agriculture is done which involves using high yielding varieties, chemical fertilisers, pesticides etc. This significantly increased global food production and fed millions of people who otherwise would have faced widespread famine. But it also came with a set of trade-offs such as soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, water pollution and higher usage of fossil fuel-based machineries. These externalities were rarely accounted for in the balance sheets of agriculture’s contribution to the economy.

The cost of these externalities can be higher than one might expect. A recent study (The Hidden Bill) analysing the societal damage caused by agriculture in the Netherlands reported that the societal costs which Dutch agriculture imposes outweigh its annual contribution to the economy by approximately €5.3 billion per year. One answer to this problem is organic farming. The same report shows that organic farming, combined with the right technology, could help close the production gap it might incur while reducing the societal costs drastically. Yet despite such benefits, organic farming remains a niche.

A large part of the reason lies in the operational and regulatory landscape that organic farmers must navigate. Over the past two decades, the number of tools, certification schemes and environmental frameworks aimed at agriculture has grown rapidly. But whether their collective effect on the farmers who manage the land has met expectations is a question worth examining.

Tools and frameworks

The tools available to farmers and those who assess and regulate farming has expanded considerably. Carbon balance tools estimate greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration at the farm level. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) tools help model the environmental impacts along the entire supply chain. There are guidelines such as the SAFA guidelines developed by the FAO which assess the multiple dimensions of sustainability (governance, environmental integrity, economic resilience, and social well-being). On the operational side, there is the organic certification under EU regulations which verifies sustainable farm management through annual inspections and detailed record keeping.

More recently, the policy landscape has added new layers. The EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) establishes a voluntary certification system for carbon farming and permanent carbon removals. The EU Biodiversity Strategy aims to protect 30% of land and sea areas by 2030. The Water Framework Directive incentivises efficient water use and water abstraction management. Each of these goals and guidelines comes with its own monitoring, reporting and verification requirements.

Each of these frameworks are technically sound and useful. However, the reality for a farmer to navigate all of them at once could be much more complex.

The fragmentation problem

The core issue is that an organic farmer in Europe today may need to comply with organic certification, participate in a carbon scheme under the emerging CRCF and demonstrate compliance with other environmental standards. Each of these involves separate methodologies, separate inspections and separate costs. The resulting cumulative administrative and financial burden is felt most acutely by smaller farm operators, where the profit margins that make organic farming viable can be potentially eroded.

This is not just an administrative oversight. It reflects a deeper structural challenge in how sustainability assessment tools are designed. In a systematic analysis of several sustainability assessment approaches, Schader et al. (2014) identified fundamental trade-offs between scope and precision. Tools that try to cover most dimensions of sustainability tend to sacrifice precision in their overall estimates. Tools that achieve higher precision tend to cover only narrow topics. No single approach manages both well. The result, in practice, is a proliferation of specialised tools i.e., one for carbon, one for biodiversity, one for economics, each imposing its own data collection requirements on farmers.

This raises a question, “Can we design systems that work differently?”

Integration as a solution

If the problem is fragmentation, the solution must be integration, not in the sense of aggregating existing tools together, but in rethinking how we assess, certify and reward sustainable farming practices.
The EU has already taken some steps in this direction. The conversion of the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) into the Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN) is designed to collect environmental, economic and social data within a single framework, following the principle of “collect once, reuse multiple times”. Schader et al. (2014) also emphasises the harmonisation of indicators and the use of frameworks like the SAFA guidelines to make the results of various assessment approaches more robust and comparable.

Adoption and improvement of precision technologies further complement the integrated approach. Remote sensing, machine learning and on-farm sensors are becoming increasingly cheaper and more capable every year. If these tools are designed from the outset for an integrated assessment i.e., measuring carbon, biodiversity indicators and nutrient flows within the same data structure, they could reduce monitoring costs while improving data quality. The ultimate goal should be a system where a farmer’s efforts towards sustainable farming are continuously monitored and verified through an interoperable platform, rather than through separate inspections and surveys for different certification schemes, and ensuring that the burden of proving sustainability does not fall disproportionately on the farmers putting in the most effort to deliver it.

Looking ahead

The tools and frameworks that we have developed for assessing sustainability represent years of rigorous scientific progress. But this progress is only valuable if it translates to progress on the ground. If the tools are uncertain, frameworks are fragmented and cost of compliance erodes the viability of organic farming, then we are adding to the problem rather than trying to solve it.

We need frameworks that are simple enough to be navigated and integrated enough to avoid duplicating efforts and costs. We need certification and labelling systems that serve farmers as much as they serve regulators and consumers. We need to be more aware of the limitations of our current approaches and the true costs of the status quo.