Sustainability at the Farm Level: Introducing RISE
Organizers: Francesco Braga, University of Guelph and Fritz Häni, Swiss College of Agriculture

The objective of this session is to discuss the practical aspects of sustainability assessment at the farm level, and to discuss the results and the potential of RISE, a tool for the measurement of holistic sustainability at the farm level. This session provides an opportunity for a open discussion on the comprehensive value of measuring sustainability at the farm level, and on how to best do it. The initial short presentations -supported by documents posted on the conference web site- are designed to support the open discussion with the audience that will take place in the second part of the session..

A key objective of this format is to facilitate the exchange of ideas between academia and industry, and to capture and document the key aspects of this exchange in a contribution to the IFAMR, the official journal of IAMA.

Structure of the session:

1. Welcome and introduction.
   Prof. Francesco Braga, University of Guelph and Editor, IFAMR
2. Introducing a holistic sustainability assessment tool: RISE.
   Prof. Fritz Häni, Swiss College of Agriculture
3. RISE: empirical results across commodities and across regions. Examples from coffee in Brazil and dairy in Ontario and in China.
   (Paper 1)
   (Paper 2)
   Prof. Fritz Häni, and Mr. Hans Porsche, Swiss College of Agriculture.
4. What can a farmer count on? A survey of sustainability indices and their relative assessment from a farmer's perspective.
   Mr. Carlo Aquilano and Mr. Ralph Kuebler, University of Guelph.
5. Validating RISE, stress testing and PCA.
   Speaker TBD
6. Open discussion
   Moderator: Prof. Francesco Braga, University of Guelph