ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Social Movements, Institutions and Governance
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1532356
This article is part of the Research TopicMeasuring Sustainability in Food Systems: Advancing Scientific Indicator and Metric Systems for Monitoring Progress Towards the UN Sustainable Development GoalsView all articles
Assessing Farm Level Sustainability: A Comparative Analysis of Horticultural Production Systems in Eritrea
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
- 2University of York, York, United Kingdom
- 3Ministry of Agriculture, Asmara, Eritrea
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Measuring the sustainability of agricultural prac ces at the farm level is a prerequisite for devising effec ve policies and strategies. This study offers an in-depth farm-level sustainability assessment of Eritrea's hor cultural sector. It aims to assess the sustainability of hor cultural crop produc on using 12 customized indicators co-developed with local stakeholders, iden fy the principal factors influencing sustainability performance, and compare the sustainability performances across two regions of Eritreea with different agroecological and socio-economic se ngs. Primary data of 170 hor cultural farmers is collected using field survey focusing on ac vi es done 2020 -2022. The assessment uses a traffic light approach to classify farms into three categories; Unsustainable (red), Acceptable (yellow) and Sustainable (green). Mul ple Linear Regression (MLR) is applied to explain the main factors contribu ng to the sustainability score of farms across the studied regions. The study shows dispari es in sustainability performance between the two study regions as measured by the indicators. The MLR model shows that farming experience, extension services, and coopera ve membership significantly influence most sustainability outcomes (p<0.05). This study highlights the necessity for a context-specific approach to assess farm-level sustainability. By mapping the sustainability landscape of the hor cultural sector and iden fying key levers for improvement, the study paves the way for informed, impac ul strategies to advance agricultural sustainability at the farm level.
Keywords: agricultural sustainability, indicators, Farm level, horticulture, Eritrea
Received: 21 Nov 2024; Accepted: 03 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Haile, Dougill, Ramoelo and Kidane. 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: Bereket Tsehaye Haile, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
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