A Multi-‐Criteria Decision approach for the sustainable dairy farm management

The profit maximization strategy still pursued by most of the farmers is largely responsible of the intensification of the production processes, natural resources’ depletion and climate change. To curb the impact of the negative externalities, new strategies have been tempted based on the corporate social responsibility to make the economic objective compatible with the environmental and social ones in the sustainable agriculture. The aim of this research is to present an application of the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach to the dairy farming to generate sustainable solutions inclusive of the economic, environment and social objectives to satisfy the preferences of different stakeholder groups involved in the dairy farm management. This approach converts the profit maximization objective in sustainable goals to be achieved simultaneously at some predefined target levels. The optimal solution consists in finding a goals’ combination by minimizing the deviations between goals and corresponding target values, weighted according with the stakeholders’ preferences. Among the many possible solutions, the best one will satisfy the Pareto optimal criteria. The results suggest that the compromise solutions obtained with MCDM in the weighted goal programming (WGP) version is different from profit maximization due to the achievement of the many dimensions of sustainability reflecting the stakeholders’ preferences for economic environment and social goals. Sensitive and trade off analysis contribute to improve the sustainable solution in whole farm planning. This approach contributes also to formulate policy measures to address the objectives of farmers versus goals of social and public interest.