| Summary: | The sustainability of agricultural systems is a critical issue in particular in developing countries where millions of people depend on agriculture as their primary source of income. In the last years, the demand for certified products, i.e. Fairtrade and organic, has
grown considerably so that many producers have adapted their processes to certified standards. This study aims to evaluate the sustainability of the Ecuadorian banana agrisystem benchmarking the conventional against Fairtrade and Organic production. The methodology includes a qualitative analysis directed to identify the criteria for the inclusion of an indicator in the evaluation and categorise the most critical sustainability assessment tools. The report results in the identification of SAFA as the most suitable framework to apply in the assessment. The qualitative analysis of both criteria and frameworks has been undergone with the Deconstruction, a methodology for qualitative analysis derived from philosophy that consists of revealing the implicit understandings
and hidden assumption that underpin a framework. The investigation has been conducted comparing the results of two samples: an association of smallholders organic and Fairtrade producers and an organisation of medium and large conventional producers.
The results show that, even if some characteristics of the agri-system affect both conventional and certified producers, the latter demonstrate more sustainable outcomes in governmental, environmental and economic dimension while conventional farms
perform higher marks in the social dimension. The reason for this last conclusion may depend on the size of the farms; hence, the last part of this study focuses on the SAFA App, the smallholder version of the SAFA tool. Ten smallholders have been surveyed and
evaluated using the SAFA App. As a result, the instrument showed its capacity to understand and adapt to the Ecuadorian banana smallholders and revealed that if the smallholders is a member of an efficient association, the results are higher. A future study
may analyse in-depth the smallholder’s sustainability to provide a basis for decisionmakers for the system’ sustainability improvement.
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