There is broad agreement that agriculture has to become more sustainable in order to provide enough affordable, healthy food at minimal environmental and social costs. But what is “more sustainable”? More often than not, different stakeholders have opposing opinions on what a more sustainable future should look like. This normative dimension is rarely explicitly addressed in sustainability assessments. In this study, we present an approach to assess the sustainability of agricultural development that explicitly accounts for the normative dimension by comparing observed development with various societal visions. We illustrate the approach by analyzing farm- and landscape-scale development as well as sustainability outcomes in a Swiss case study landscape. Observed changes were juxtaposed with desired changes by Avenir Suisse, a liberal think tank representing free-market interests; the Swiss Farmers Association, representing a conservative force; and Landwirtschaft mit Zukunft, an exponent of the Swiss agroecological movement. Overall, the observed developments aligned most closely with desired developments of the liberal think-tank (72%). Farmer interviews revealed that in the case study area farms increased in size (+ 57%) and became more specialized and more productive (+ 223%) over the past 20 years. In addition, interpretation of aerial photographs indicated that farming became more rationalized at the landscape level, with increasing field sizes (+ 34%) and removal of solitary field trees (− 18%). The case study example highlights the varying degrees to which current developments in agriculture align with societal visions. By using societal visions as benchmarks to track the progress of agricultural development, while explicitly addressing their narratives and respective systems of values and norms, this approach offers opportunities to inform also the wider public on the extent to which current developments are consistent with different visions. This could help identify mismatches between desired and actual development and pave the way for designing new policies.

人们普遍认为，农业必须变得更加可持续，以便以最小的环境和社会成本提供足够的负担得起的健康食品。但什么是“更可持续”？通常，不同的利益相关者对于更可持续的未来应该是什么样子持有相反的意见。这一规范维度很少在可持续性评估中得到明确解决。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种评估农业发展可持续性的方法，通过将观察到的发展与各种社会愿景进行比较，明确说明了规范维度。我们通过分析瑞士案例研究景观中的农场和景观规模发展以及可持续性成果来说明该方法。代表自由市场利益的自由主义智库 Avenir Suisse 将观察到的变化与期望的变化并列；瑞士农民协会，代表保守势力；Landwirtschaft mit Zukunft 是瑞士生态农业运动的倡导者。总体而言，观察到的发展与自由派智库的期望发展最为一致（72%）。农民访谈显示，在过去 20 年里，案例研究地区的农场规模扩大了 (+ 57%)，变得更加专业化和生产力更高 (+ 223%)。此外，对航空照片的解释表明，随着田地面积的增加（+ 34％）和孤立的田间树木的去除（− 18％），农业在景观层面变得更加合理化。该案例研究强调了当前农业发展与社会愿景的不同程度的契合。通过使用社会愿景作为跟踪农业发展进展的基准，同时明确阐述其叙述以及各自的价值观和规范体系，这种方法提供了机会，让更广泛的公众了解当前发展与不同愿景的一致程度。这可以帮助识别期望发展与实际发展之间的不匹配，并为设计新政策铺平道路。