Abstract

FERREIRA, Sandra; MARTA-COSTA, Ana; FRAGOSO, Rui  and  VIAN, Carlos. Role and contributions of agricultural organizations on the path to sustainability: identification of indicators. Rev. de Ciências Agrárias [online]. 2023, vol.46, n.3, pp.31-40.  Epub May 04, 2023. ISSN 0871-018X.  https://doi.org/10.19084/rca.31660.

The competitive context of agricultural organizations, such as associations and cooperatives is being influenced by the paradigm of sustainable development, being necessary to consider the requirements of sustainability in their activity. These agricultural organizations can facilitate the interaction between farmers and, hence favour the sustainable production and trading of their agricultural products, as well as the access to services that promote the adoption of sustainable practices. Agricultural organizations inform their associates, enabling the technological development, and are key players in increasing productivity and improving environmental issues. Thus, this article aims to identify and define indicators for evaluating the sustainability of agricultural associations and cooperatives. A systematic analysis of the literature is developed focused on scientific articles from the bibliographic bases of the Web of Science and Scopus. The results showed that sustainability indicators are enable to support predictive models for assessing sustainability, and highlights their contribution to improving the management of agricultural organizations, allowing the visualization of strengths and opportunities to face weaknesses and threats. Mapping documents allowed identifying economic, environmental and social indicators, which are a starting point for a research agenda focused on the role of agricultural organizations on the sustainability of the agricultural sector.

Keywords : Agricultural associations; agricultural cooperatives; sustainability assessment; sustainability indicators; Triple bottom line.

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