A sustainability assessment of an agroforestry system : the economic, environmental and social sustainability of an agroforestry system compared to a conventional, an organic and a perennial cropping system.

Sammanfattning: The agricultural sector is facing an increasing number of economic, social and environmental challenges and the development of new sustainable agricultural systems is desired. Agroforestry is an example of a production system that contributes to the transformation of current agricultural systems into more sustainable production systems. The aim of this study is to compare the economic, environmental and social sustainability of an agroforestry system to a conventional, an organic and a perennial cropping system in the south-west of Scania, Sweden. To assess the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the different cropping systems, a selection of indicators from the DiverIMPACTS sustainability assessment framework is used. This study shows an increase in environmental sustainability for the agroforestry systems compared to the conventional system, the organic system and the perennial system. The economic and social sustainability could be a challenge for agroforestry systems. However, the increase in diversity of agroforestry systems provides opportunities to increase the economic sustainability as well as the social sustainability.