ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Agroecological Cropping Systems
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fagro.2025.1581667
This article is part of the Research TopicAgroecology in Action: Case Studies, Challenges and Best PracticesView all 3 articles
Using the OASIS tool (Original Agroecological Survey and Indicator System) applied to organic and conventional farms in Belgium, France and Italy
Provisionally accepted
Alexander Wezel1,2
Paola Migliorini2,3*
Anna Théodora Brumer1Tommaso Gaifami2Angelica Marchetti2Geoffrey Floymont1Garance Guizard1Elsa Michel1Marie-Alix Renaud1
Karla Škorjanc2Nicolas Allard4
Stefano Bocchi5
Alain PEETERS6- 1Institut Supérieur d'Agriculture Rhône-Alpes, Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France
- 2Agroecology Europe, Brussels, Belgium
- 3University of Gastronomic Sciences, Bra, Italy
- 4Terres Vivantes, Corbais, Belgium
- 5University of Milan, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
- 6RHEA Research Centre, Corbais, Belgium
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European agriculture faces different major challenges to adapt and transform current farming and food systems into more sustainable ones. Agroecology is one transition pathway. However, what is lacking is assessing this transition with adequate tools and methodology. We here present the Original Agroecological Survey and Indicator System (OASIS) tool and apply it to farms in Belgium, France and Italy as an illustration of its functioning. 53 conventional and organic farmers of three farming systems (crop-CP, livestock-LP or mixed crop-livestock -CLP) were interviewed and data collected for a large range of indicators (scoring from 1 to 5) across five dimensions: agroecological farming practices, economic viability, socio-political aspects, environment and biodiversity, and resilience.Organic farms had slightly higher scores overall compared to conventional for the five dimensions.However, for the adoption of different agroecological practices a clear difference was found with often clearly higher scores for organic, as well as similar differences regarding most biodiversity and environment indicators as well as for indicators for revenue and income sources. Those farms that had higher overall farm scores scored generally significantly higher for the economic viability. Farmers described many parameters among the socio-political aspects dimension criteria, including several constraints that resulted in lower scores. Contrasting results for different criteria were found for the dimension of resilience, with some farms scoring higher for autonomy and independence from inputs and market, while others scored lower. As an operational result, overall, the OASIS tool was a well applicable and quite complete tool assessing agroecology at the farm level and some links beyond.However, further development could improve the tool.
Keywords: Agroecological practices, Agroecological transition, Farm assessment, Organic Agriculture, multiple indicator analysis
Received: 22 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wezel, Migliorini, Brumer, Gaifami, Marchetti, Floymont, Guizard, Michel, Renaud, Škorjanc, Allard, Bocchi and PEETERS. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Paola Migliorini, University of Gastronomic Sciences, Bra, Italy
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