Agricultural Sustainability in Developing Countries: An Assessment of the Relationships Between Drivers and Indicators in Hoa Binh Province, Vietnam

Abstract

Indicator-based methods have been extensively used to assess agricultural sustainability. Their main weakness has been a focus on the outcomes, revealing little about the causes of these outcomes because drivers of sustainability, and interactions among indicators and drivers, are not explicitly addressed. This makes it difficult to identify systemic policy levers and potential unintended consequences of policies. Our research took a systemic approach to sustainability assessment and explored relationships between indicators and drivers within the small scale farming systems of Hoa Binh Province, Vietnam. Our results highlight rather poor sustainability performance. Crop yield and net farm income were low. Food self-sufficiency was a problem. Households were dependent on high rates of chemical fertilizers and pesticides while pest and disease occurrence was reportedly increasing. Irrigation water shortages were also an issue. We also found many interrelationships among drivers and indicators of agricultural sustainability. Household location, education level, labor availability, and ethnic minority membership were highly connected drivers that influenced several other drivers and indicators directly or indirectly. Policies targeted at these are likely to have broad systemic effects on sustainability performance. However, due to the connected nature of the system, there is potential for unintended consequences from well-intended policies.