The development and use of farm level indicators in England

In recent years the concept of ‘sustainability indicators’ has become important within agricultural policy development. Numerous indicators have been proposed by agricultural scientists and statisticians, which reflect the wide range of interests that are impacted by agriculture. In support of UK policy objectives the pilot national set of indicators of agricultural sustainability have been re-cast into indicators that can be collected, interpreted and compared at a farm level. The revised indicator set is directly linked to the national set via either disaggregation of the original data or by using a surrogate measure. A simple to use software package which prioritises the indicators according to farm type and which links trends with farm management decisions and practices identifying steps for improvements is being used as the main means of knowledge transfer.