1 The evaluation of sustainability of organic farms in Tuscany Chiara Certomà 1 ,Paola Migliorini 2 In: GKCEKUS H., TRKER UMUT T., LAMOREAUX J.W.. Survival and Sustainability: Environmental concerns in the 21th century. Series book: Environmental Earth Science. p. 165-177, Springer, ISBN: 978-3-540-95991-5, doi: 10.1007 1 PhD candidate in Human Rights, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertà 33, 56127 Pisa, Italia, chiara.certoma@sssup.it, +39 338 3858424 2 Research fellow, PhD, Department of Agronomy and land Management, University of Florence, Piazzale delle Cascine 18, 50141 Firenze, Italia, paola.migliroini@unifi.it, +39.055.3288.252 Abstract Sustainability evaluation with MESMIS Framework has been conducted in 5 organic farms in Tuscany with different management approach. The real differences is, indeed, determined by motivations that explain how the landscape, the work structure and the cultural heritage organize themselves giving the present assessment of the Tuscan rural work. Keywords: sustainable agriculture, social sustainability, organic farms, MESMIS 1. Introduction The implementation and evaluation of agricultural sustainable methods are one of the most challenging goal in political and scientific research. The use of sustainability indicators is becoming a frequent tool to evaluate agricultural systems. Several lists of indicators exist (Morse et al. 2001). Evaluation strategies and methodologies were worked out in order to quantitative describe and qualitative evaluate ecosystem management (Douglass, 1984; Conway, 1985). A significant research experience with an holistic approach was carried out in 17 countries by a European network for prototype agroecosystem (Vereijken, 1994-1999; Vazzana e Raso, 1997). The network developed a management methodology with a list of indicators on the following criteria: abiotic environment, income/profit, nature/landscape, employment, health/well-being. The methodology was applied in Tuscany where a specific long term experiment to evaluate the organic vs conventional sector was established in 1992 at the experiment farm of Montepaldi. Other indicators to evaluate biodiversity and soil fertility were developed (Migliorini, 2006) and other methodologies to evaluate sustainability were implemented. A network in France (Bockstaller et al., 1997) proposed different agroecological indicators. In Switzerland some researches (Bossard et al. 1997) adopted five criteria: abiotic environment; biotic environment; cultural value; social aspects; economic aspects. In small rice agroecosystem a quantitative approach to evaluate productive and environmental performance has been applied (Dalsgaard et al. 1997). An environmental account methodology has been developed in order to combine economic with ecological aspects (Pacini et al. 2000; Halberg, 1999 e 2005). Other approaches are based on rapid evaluation with on-farm indicators for farmers (Nicholls et al. 2001) or on-farm questioners (Rigby at al., 2001). Organic agriculture nowadays, is no more a nice (Willer and Yoursy, 2006). Italy is the third country of the world for presence of organic land and in Tuscany 10% of total agricultural surface is growing organic with 3000 organic farms (ARSIA, 2006). As an alternative propose to