Upland farming provides important benefits to society. To retain these benefits, measures to encourage farms to adopt practices that balance economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability are required. This study used survey data from a sample of farms located in less-favoured areas in Northern England to identify the trade-offs between the three dimensions of farm-level sustainability and the impacts of farm behaviours on them, including diversification, participation in agri-environmental policies and stakeholder management. Results showed that farm businesses may face a trade-off between improving economic and environmental performance through their decisions about participating in agri-environmental schemes and that strengthening relationships with some stakeholders is critical for achieving sustainability. This suggests that future policy design may simultaneously improve three dimensions of sustainability by promoting environmental conservation activities through non-economic incentives and by encouraging farm businesses to build good working relationships with their stakeholders.

旱地农业为社会提供了重要的利益。为了保持这些好处，需要采取措施鼓励农场采用平衡可持续发展的经济、环境和社会方面的做法。本研究使用来自英格兰北部欠发达地区农场样本的调查数据来确定农场可持续发展的三个维度与农场行为对它们的影响之间的权衡，包括多样化、参与农业环境政策和利益相关者管理。结果表明，农场企业可能面临通过参与农业环境计划的决定来改善经济和环境绩效之间的权衡，以及加强与一些利益相关者的关系对于实现可持续性至关重要。