ABSTRACT
During the last two decades, European Union has been increasingly con cerned with such issues as agricultural overproduction and environmental conservation. Consequently, sustainability and efficiency of agricultural enterprises have become an important issue, both at research and policy levels. In this framework, the level of production and profitability could no longer be the only criterion for evaluating farm performance. This article analyses the performance of the farms included in the Italian Farm Ac countancy Data Network (RICA) from the following viewpoints: a) economic success at farm level, b) efficiency in the use of potentially pol luting inputs, and c) sustainability from an environmental viewpoint. On the base of the level of performance attained as regards economic success, efficiency and sustainability, farms have been classified into eight typolo gies, whose relations with structural features and styles of farming have been checked out. Although the RICA sample can not be taken as ‘directly’ representative of Italian agriculture, the relationships between farm typolo gies and their performance may, nevertheless, provide decision-makers with useful information on how to support or steer the management of farms depending on the typology they belong to.
