Multi-criteria analysis of blackberry production systems

In this paper the authors compared and ranked three production systems - conventional, integrated and organic blackberry farming from the Croatian producers' welfare perspective. Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the multicriteria decision making method, the authors evaluated which of the production systems satisfy to the fullest extent the set of mutually exclusive requirements. For this purpose, respondents were asked to evaluate the importance of economic results, market prospects and technological advantages/disadvantages in blackberry production. The combination of 14 individual indicators showed an overall appraisal. The conventional system is the most acceptable in economic sense, but at the same time inferior to other systems in terms of the market and technological criteria. Therefore, producers who estimate profit as the only criterion should produce berries in the conventional way because it still generates the best economic indicators. The environmentally friendly organic production system is the most appropriate considering the market and technological factors, but lags significantly in terms of economic criteria. The integrated system, as a compromise production solution achieved high position to the market and technological criteria, while weaker according to economic criteria. Taking into accounts all related criteria and sub criteria, the organic production system is the most reasonable solution in blackberry production (preference scores 0.369). The conventional production system is the second best (0.318) while the lowest ranked integrated system (0.313) might experience a popularization with the enforcement of recently introduced framework law. However, value priorities indicate a very small difference between the three production systems and even a small change of variable factors ratings significantly determines the overall grade.