Sustainable development assessment on Grass-based circular business models for rural agri-food value chains (GO-GRASS)

Climate change affects temperate areas by increasing the risk of suffering extreme climatic events and sharping major problematics. Moreover, climate change and its related effects jeopardize water and food supply. Rural areas are key for sustainable development and provide socio-economics advantages, but it also exists a downside on key aspects such as less job, education and infraestructures accessibility for its inhabitants. The European Commission is strongly committed to improving life quality and business opportunities in rural areas. Thus, the GO-GRASS is an H2020 project that aims to create innovative business opportunities in rural areas based on grassland and green fodder. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) development is a very useful instrument for organizations management. that allows testing the efficiency of a system considering elements and standards related to a specific topic or work field. Within the GO-GRASS, KPIs development is key to evaluate the sustainability of grass-based value chains and assessing the replication potential of demos business models. Based on SAFA indicators and GRI standards, the evaluation of value chains was geared to economic, social and environmental issues to obtain finally, a set of eight, six and 10 KPIs selected by the project´s experts that allows grass-based value chains evaluation.