In the last several years the politicians and researchers have discussed the necessity of sustainability in the agriculture and rural development. During this time many politics and supports have been concentrated on both of these areas. The aim of these discussions and supports is to motivate farmers to keep farming sustainable in all three main aspects (i.e. social, ecological and economic). Unfortunately, the Czech methodology to answer the following question has not been prepared yet: “What farmer fulfills the concept of sustainable development?”
For a successful implementation of principles of the sustainable agriculture on the farms it is important to answer this question and provide farmers with a tool to assess the level of sustainability of their farming and improve it after that.
This paper is aimed to introduce the Czech IDEA method based on the French IDEA method enabling to assess if a Czech farmer fulfills the concept of sustainable development. The French IDEA method was created for self-assessment of sustainable principles of French farmers on their farms mainly. Main modifications for the Czech agriculture were based on the sources accessible in the Czech Republic compared to the French original ones, and on the expert evaluation of the information available due to the used indicators. Finally, the use of the method is demonstrated on the group of Czech farms. The data were collected mainly by the questionnaires in the Internal Research Project of the Czech Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information in 2012.
Mrnuštík Konečná, M.
Auspicia, 2014, Vol. 1, s. 114-130