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The alignment of the environmental, economic and social sustainability of farms is necessary for enhancing the provision of public goods in farming. This study combines the use of three tools for the assessment of farm sustainability. It provides first insights into the sustainability performance of farms at different stages of agro-ecological transitions in 15 case studies covering a range of different farming systems across Europe. Each case study reflects a different transition towards agro-ecological farming. The tools applied were COMPAS (an economic farm assessment tool); Cool Farm Tool (a greenhouse gas inventory, water footprint and biodiversity assessment tool); and the SMART Farm Tool (a multidimensional sustainability assessment tool). First results of the use of combined sustainability assessments deepen the understanding of different farming systems. Sustainability performance varies greatly between farms, but overall, agro-ecological farms tend to enhance biodiversity and water quality. For soil quality, no clear patterns could be identified. The same applies to economic performance at different stages of the agro-ecological transition. Quality of life was generally rated medium to high on all investigated farms. The combined sustainability assessment enabled the identification of areas for further policy development. Aligning the tools required harmonising definitions, simplification and assumptions with regard to the input data of the tools.

Among the keys enabling the actors of the food chain to become more sustainable, the Strategy assigns an important role to knowledge and information. For this reason, the Farm to Fork Strategy aims to make the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) the main data source of sustainable indicators, turning it into a Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN). Wine not only represents one of the most important products of the Italian agri-food system (value of turnover and exports), but it is also characterised by a widespread use of traditional certification systems (PDO/ PGI, Organic), to which in recent years specific certifi cations of sustainability have been added, evaluated through its threefold dimension: economic, environmental, and social. Indeed, wine is much ahead of other sectors in the process of sustainability certification both for the process and the product itself. The paper is an effort to test the current set of information included in the FADN and some related computable indicators as a feasible tool for the assessment of sustainability in the wine sector. The goal of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we assess the actual level of sustainability of the wine sector in Italy through an indicator that synthetizes the three dimensions (economic, environmental, and social) of sustainability at the regional level. Secondly, more in general, we test the current capacity of the FADN information to provide a reliable measure of sustainability given the intention of the EU legislator to switch the European data network from FADN to FSDN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]