A DELPHI STUDY TO DETERMINE SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS

Abstract

Sustainable farming is a growing concern of agricultural policy agenda. The concept of ‘farming sustainability’ has a broad appeal but little specifcity. Therefore, to bring in a wide spectrum of knowledge, experiences, and mental models, a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholders collaborative research approach was adopted to determine important factors promoting rice farming sustainability. To cope with this challenge of stakeholders’ participation, a modifed Delphi technique was employed to capture the views of stakeholders. Based on a review of published and grey literature as well as informal discussion with experts, an ‘initial list’ of factors was prepared, and a panel of academic experts, researchers, extension workers, policy makers, NGO workers, agro-business leaders, and farmers provided input in the form of close and open questions. After administering two rounds survey, a fair consensus of experts score was achieved, and accordingly, a set of 21 factors: economical (3), social (9), ecological (7), and political (2) was determined. Based on the fndings from this study these factors can be contributed substantially to promote and manage rice farming sustainability at the local level. The results highlighted that stakeholders’ participation is an empirical way of generating straightforward inputs for coherent strategy formulation that are imperative for achieving sustainability.