The sustainability of social farming: A study through the social return on investment methodology (SROI)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the sustainability of Social farming (SF), with attention to practices addressed people suffering from addictions. In this study the Social Return on Investment (SROI) has been used as assessment methodology; has been used, which is increasingly used to approach the quantification of social, environmental and economic benefits on different types of investment. The SF activity of the Agricoltura Capodarco Cooperative was studied in order to evaluate the outcome in monetary terms taking into account all the beneficiaries involved. The application of SROI allowed to estimate a return of investment, coming mainly from the social component, ranging from 1,89 to 4,10 times, according to the degree of conservativeness of the estimates. The study extends both the analysis of SF to people categories only marginally addressed before and the application fields of SROI as assessment methodology.