Measure and comparison of economic, social and ecological sustainability of farming systems in the Marvdasht plain

Agricultural sustainability refers to the ability of a cropping system to produce, without causing irreversible damage to the ecosystem. There is an increasing need to view cropping systems and identify management practices in a holistic indicator-based impact assessment. The main objective of this study was to compare and rank the cropping systems of the Marvdasht plain in Fars Province; in order to show the gap between them. To achieve this aim, sustainability were divided into four levels based on Composite Index(CI),which is useful for the identification of sustainability and includes three dimension: (1) economical, (2) social, and (3) environmental and consist of 11 indicators. Required data were collected by questionnaire from 200 cropping farmers who were selected through a stratified sampling design from six regions located in Marvdasht plain. The computer software of SPSS was used to analyse the data. Indicators were normalized using the division by means technique and were weighted. The weightings were derived from Principal Component Analysis (PCA). CI was used to map the sustainability levels at the plain. According to classifying CI, four categories were identified, which zone 6 identified as being unsustainable, while two zones 2 and 3 were considered as belonging to the relatively unsustainable and the zone 5 was identified as relatively sustainable and the remaining zones (1,4) were classified as sustainable. We conclude that the usage of multidimensional and holistic CI for analysing sustainability of complex cropping systems is extremely important.