Assessing sustainability in agriculture. From learning to practice
The modern world is facing climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution, which requires collective action. Sustainability awareness events facilitate the exchange of experience, define strategies and mobilise resources for environmental initiatives. They are a key tool for spreading the ideas of sustainable development in society, as well as for strengthening international partnerships and ensuring the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature.
That is why, within the framework of the SULAWE-ERASMUS-EDU-2022-CBHE project (101083023) ‘Sustainable Livestock Production and Animal Welfare’ (SULAWE), several events were held in February at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NUBiP) to disseminate knowledge about sustainable production and tools for its assessment to students in various fields.
The first was the webinar ‘RISE – a tool for assessing the sustainability of agricultural enterprises’, which took place on 6 February and was organised for the interested academic community, including students.
The second event was the LLL course ‘Farm sustainability assessment as a tool for successful transformation of agriculture’, which was held on 19 February to provide students with knowledge of the principles of sustainable development and to develop skills and competencies in assessing real production farms.
Both events were made possible through the cooperation of the universities participating in the SULAWE project consortium (National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Poltava State Agrarian University, Lviv National University of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology named after S. Z. Gzhytskyi, East Ukrainian National University named after V. Dahl, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden, Uppsala; Nuertingen-Geislingen University, Germany; University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH-HAFL), Switzerland, as the developer of the Response-Inducing Sustainability Evaluation (RISE) software product.
The courses were attended by business representatives and some interested teachers.
Sarah Pfaff, SULAWE Project Manager, opened the courses with an introduction and spoke about the project’s achievements and plans for the current year.
Andrii Getya and Nataliia Hryshchenko discussed sustainable development as a concept, its legislative basis, and provided information on the Common Agricultural Policy in force in the EU.
Mykhailo Matveyev highlighted the capabilities of the RISE programme, which is an internationally recognised tool for assessing the sustainability of agricultural enterprises. The programme is supported by a global network of consultants who provide expertise in sustainability assessment and project implementation. To date, the RISE methodology has been successfully applied in 64 countries, covering more than 6,000 farms worldwide.
The participants were offered 3 study cases of real farms assessed by experts from Ukrainian universities:
-„ Lelyk“ dairy farm with its own processing (presented by Natalia Mazur from LNUVMS of S.Z. Gzhytskyi);
– „Yastrubchanske“ LLC, a dairy cow farm (presented by Mykhailo Matveiev, Andriy Getya from NUBiP and farm manager Nataliia Honcharova);
– goat breeding and craft production farm “DOBRO-KRAFT” (presented by Yulia Karban and Oksana Kravchenko from PSAU).
The speakers provided a comprehensive overview of the methodology, highlighting key indicators used in sustainability assessments and explaining the fundamental principles behind the RISE algorithm. Participants actively participated in the discussions, expressing interest in conducting further sustainability assessments of additional farms.
Some of the attendees expressed a desire to conduct assessments of their own farms.
