http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-events/iica/en/ Sust Agriculture SDG 2.4.1_ENGLISH © FAO: http://www.fao.org

1. AGENDA ITEM 3.5:
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, FOOD
LOSSES & WASTE INDICATORS
• Indicator 2.4.1 – Proportion of agricultural area under productive and
sustainable agriculture
FAO-OEA/CIE-IICA working group on agricultural and livestock statistics
for Latin America and the Caribbean
Quito, Ecuador, 24 - 26 October 2017

2. SDG GOAL, TARGET & INDICATOR
SDG Goal 2:
Zero Hunger
Target 2.4:
By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and
implement resilient agricultural practices that increase
productivity and production, that help maintain
ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to
climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and
other disasters and that progressively improve land and
soil quality
Indicator 2.4.1:
Proportion of agricultural area under productive and
sustainable agriculture
Status:
Tier 3 – Submitted to IAEG for upgrading to Tier 2

3. INDICATOR FORMULA
Formula: Proportion of land under productive and sustainable agriculture:
=
𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒
𝐴𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎
Where:
Agricultural area = arable land + Permanent crops + permanent meadows and pastures
• The denominator agricultural area is a well-known and established indicator that is
collected by statistical bodies in countries and compiled internationally via a questionnaire
by FAO. These data are available in FAO’s database FAOSTAT
• The numerator captures the three dimensions of sustainable production: environmental,
economic and social
• Land (agricultural area) under productive and sustainable agriculture will be the
agricultural area of those farms that satisfy sub-indicators selected across all three
dimensions.

4. METHODOLOGY DEVELOPMENT STEPS*
1. Choosing the scale for sustainability assessment
2. Determining the scope of activities
3. Determining coverage of dimensions
4. Selecting the themes within each dimension
5. Choosing sub-indicator/s for each theme
6. Establishing sustainability criteria for each sub-indicator
7. Assessing sustainability performance at farm level by sub-indicator
8. Deriving aggregate measures of sustainability
9. Report aggregate indicator 2.4.1 and sub-indicators by themes using a dashboard
* Indicator methodology developed in collaboration with Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics (GSARS)

5. METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES
Key principles applied in developing the indicator:
• Policy relevance and “action-ability”
• Universality
• Comparability
• Measurability and cost effectiveness
Impacts upon:
• Choice of sub-indicators for different dimensions
• Choice of sustainability criteria for each sub-indicator
• Level of sophistication in data collection
Indicator focus:
• As opposed to practices the indicator measure outcomes: More objective, record state
or change of state

6. STRUCTURE OF THE INDICATOR
Indicator: Overall indicator for target 2.4
Dimension: Economic, environmental, social
Theme: Specific topic within a dimension (e.g. profitability)
Sub-indicator: Metric used to measure a specific theme (e.g. Net farm income)
Variable: Items that are the focus of data collection

7. MEASUREMENT SCOPE
• Development of indicator at farm level
• Focus on crop and livestock production
• Forestry, fisheries and aquaculture are excluded
• Backyard production and hobby farms are excluded
• Food harvested from the wild is excluded
• Agro-forestry systems and rice-fish system are included
• Non-food crops and livestock outputs are included (including crops for energy)

8. INDICATOR COMPOSITION
Proposed themes and sub-indicators
Dimensions No. Themes Sub-indicators
Economic
1 Land productivity Farm output value per farm agricultural area
2 Farm profitability Net farm income
3 Financial resilience Access to financial services
Environmental
4 Soil health Soil health
5 Water health
Water use
Water quality
6 Biodiversity Agricultural heterogeneity
Social
7 Decent work Wage rate in agriculture
8 Well-being Agricultural household income
9 Access to land Secure rights to land tenure

9. INDICATOR COMPOSITION
Proposed sustainability criteria
Dimensions No. Themes Sub-indicators Proposed sustainability criteria
Economic
1 Land productivity
Farm output value per farm
agricultural area
Above one third of the 90th percentile
2 Farm profitability Net farm income Zero and above
3 Financial resilience Access to financial services
Access to at least one of the financial
services
Environmental
4 Soil health Soil health
At least half of farm not affected by soil
degradation
5 Water health
Water use No trend detected in groundwater level
Water quality
Nitrogen concentration in rivers and
aquifers below 50 mg/l
6 Biodiversity Agricultural heterogeneity
Shannon Evenness Index above 0.3,
Average patch size lower than 2 ha and
Edge density below 0.01
Social
7 Decent work Wage rate in agriculture
Equal to or above the international
poverty line
8 Well-being Agricultural household income
Equal to or above the international
poverty line
9 Access to land Secure rights to land tenure
Positive response to at least one of the
secure rights conditions

10. One Out All Out Approach (OOAO):
When all 9 themes are assessed as
sustainable relative to its criteria.
Where:
AAi = Agricultural area of farm i
Si = Assessment of farm i
Si = 0 when at least one sub-indicator is
considered not sustainable
Si = 1 when all sub-indicators are considered
sustainable or not applicable
Dimension Based Approach (DBA):
When 2 of the 3 themes are assessed as
sustainable for each dimension.
Where:
AAi = Agricultural area of farm i
𝑆𝑖
′
= Assessment of farm i
𝑆𝑖
′
= 0 when at least two themes in at least
one dimension are considered not
sustainable
𝑆𝑖
′
= 1 when 2 out 3 themes in each
dimension are considered sustainable or
not applicable
COMPILATION OF AGGREGATE INDICATOR
Aggregate indicator is formed by summing the agricultural area of the sampled farms
considered sustainable in relation to total agricultural area of the country.
𝑆𝐷𝐺 2.4.1 𝑂𝑂𝐴𝑂 =
𝑖=1
𝑛
𝐴𝐴𝑖 ∗ 𝑆𝑖
𝑖=1
𝑛
𝐴𝐴𝑖
𝑆𝐷𝐺 2.4.1 𝐷𝐵𝐴 =
𝑖=1
𝑛
𝐴𝐴𝑖 ∗ 𝑆𝑖
′
𝑖=1
𝑛
𝐴𝐴𝑖

11. DATA SOURCES
• Farm survey
• Supplemented by monitoring systems, remote sensing and thematic maps for
attributing results to the farm.
• Price survey and administrative sources

12. REPORTING THE INDICATOR
Frequency: every 3 years
Disaggregation:
• Sub-national level
• Type of activity
• Size of farm
Reporting of sustainable agricultural area at:
• General level: aggregate indicator
• Dimension level:
– Economically sustainable
– Socially sustainable
– Environmentally sustainable
• Theme/sub-indicator level according to:
– Land productivity
– Farm profitability
– Financial resilience
– Soil health
– Water health
o Water use
o Water quality
– Biodiversity
– Decent work
– Well-being
– Access to land

13. INDICATOR LIMITATIONS
• The indicator covers only selected key aspects related to sustainable agriculture at
farm level.
• Not covered for farm:
• Labour productivity
• Pollution from pesticides
• Energy use
• GHG emissions
• Burning
• Gender equality
• Occupational health and safety
• Food waste
• Not covered beyond farm:
• Diversification of the national agriculture as a whole
• Food security
• Land concentration
• Land-use changes
• Quality of the agricultural outputs
• Nutrition
• Transportation, storage, processing, distribution and marketing
• Sustainability of supply chain
• Foreign trade

14. AFCAS25, Entebbe, Uganda 13-17 Nov 2017
IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES
• Collection and compilation of the required data:
• Implementation of farm survey
• Incorporation of additional questions in a farm survey (where it exists)
• Capturing the reference coordinates of the sampled farms
• Adaptation of the farm survey sample size and design (if necessary)
• Implementing/strengthening the water quality monitoring system
• Producing/updating/improving environmental thematic maps
• Integration of different data sources
• Country capacity building
• Resources (e.g. infrastructure, staff, budget, etc.)
• Institutional coordination

15. AFCAS25, Entebbe, Uganda 13-17 Nov 2017
Empirical RESULTS
Desktop testing is ongoing in 5 countries:
• Bangladesh
• Ecuador
• Italy
• Kyrgyz Republic
• Rwanda
The tests aim to assess:
• Availability and quality of data
• Feasibility of building the sub-indicators
• Correlation among the sub-indicators
• Sensitivity of the results to threshold values
• Compilation of the aggregate 2.4.1 indicator according to alternative approaches

16. INDICATOR POLICY USE AND INTERPRETATION
Policy use:
Aggregate indicator and associated dashboard is a way forward to:
• Create an international standard and method
• Provide a structured and transparent framework to measure sustainable
agriculture
• Encourage discussion of sustainability and link to policy action
• Allows focus on main issues related to sustainability
• Drive the policy towards agricultural sustainability
• Measure the progress towards sustainable outcomes
• Focus on interventions on various levels
Interpretation:
• Easy to interpret in terms of the extent to which country agriculture is far from
being productive and sustainable
• Easy to identify and prioritize the areas that require intervention

17. FAO – CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT/TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE*
• Country desktop testing (October to December 2017)
• Training workshop (November 2017)
• Development of toolkit (1st half of 2018)
• Development of questionnaire and instruction manual
• Field tests of data collection instrument
• Development of data processing procedures
• Preparation of guidelines (2018)
• Development of training material including e-learning (2018)
* Will be conducted in collaboration with Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics (GSARS)

18. QUESTIONS FOR THE PANEL
What do you perceive to be the most important challenges for the implementation
of this/these indicator/s?
Which kind of support you think that FAO can provide to overcome these
challenges?
* Will be conducted in collaboration with Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics (GSARS)

19. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
INDICATOR 2.4.1 – JEAN-MARC FAURES
JEANMARC.FAURES@FAO.ORG
19