The development of the APES (Agroecological Practices for Ecosystem Services) framework followed a two-phase process involving both a comprehensive literature review and multi-actor participatory engagement. Initially, scientific literature provided the conceptual foundation for linking agroecological practices to ecosystem service (ES) provision. However, to ensure the framework’s relevance and usability across diverse agricultural contexts, its design was tested and refined through two participatory workshops conducted within the scope of the Horizon 2020 RADIANT project.

The first of these workshops took place during the CREATOR event in Athens, Greece, in June 2022, bringing together farmers, researchers, policy actors, and food chain stakeholders. The second workshop was held in Orkney, Scotland, in July 2022, as part of a similar CREATOR event. In both workshops, participants were invited to brainstorm collaboratively around two central questions: (1) Which ecosystem services are perceived as most important or under pressure in their farming systems? and (2) Which farming practices do they consider most influential in enhancing or degrading these services? Insights from these workshops proved crucial in grounding the framework in real-world farming experiences and socio-ecological contexts. Participants’ inputs helped refine the scope of relevant services and informed the final selection of practices to be included as indicators. This co-development process also contributed to the legitimacy and usability of the tool by incorporating knowledge from across the agricultural knowledge and innovation system (AKIS), including farmers, consumers, processors, advisors, and researchers. While geographically located in two specific countries, the Athens workshop included a diverse group of stakeholders from different Mediterranean and European regions. This allowed for a broader range of perspectives to inform the development of the framework, despite the limited number of workshop locations.

The APES framework, resulting from the above mentioned co-development process, is designed to quantify ecosystem service delivery through a series of practice-based indicators applied at farm level. In total, the framework evaluates twenty-two ecosystem services: eight provisioning services (e.g., food, feed, fiber, genetic resources) and fourteen regulating and supporting services (e.g., soil fertility, pest regulation, climate regulation, biodiversity conservation). These services were defined and categorized based on the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) (https://cices.eu/) to ensure consistency with widely recognized ES typologies (see Figure 1 ).

Given the diversity of provisioning ecosystem services and the challenge of capturing their value through conventional metrics, we adopted a qualitative, perception-based approach that draws on farmer-reported satisfaction with yields and crop diversity. This aligns with broader calls in the literature to expand and adapt provisioning service assessment beyond purely economic or production-based indicators (Anand and Gupta, 2020). The evaluation of provisioning ecosystem services in the APES framework is grounded in the principle that farmers are uniquely positioned to assess the productivity and performance of their systems. As a result, we adopted an approach based primarily on farmers’ perceptions of satisfaction with yields, complemented by quantitative measures of crop and varietal diversity for genetic resources. This method ensures that the evaluation reflects not only ecological performance but also context-specific knowledge and experience, which are critical in agroecological systems.

Provisioning services such as food, feed, fiber, raw materials, energy, cosmetics and medicines, and timber are evaluated through farmer self-assessment of yield satisfaction. During the participatory assessment, farmers are asked to rate their satisfaction on a three-point scale: 1: not satisfied, 2: moderately or averagely satisfied, 3: very satisfied.

This scale is used to score each provisioning service relevant to the farm’s production system. The emphasis on subjective yield satisfaction recognizes that agroecological productivity is often measured in terms that go beyond yield quantity, such as stability, diversity, cultural relevance, and input efficiency.

For genetic resource services, which are a crucial component of provisioning in agroecological systems, the evaluation is based on the number of species and varieties cultivated. This reflects the role of crop and varietal diversity in enhancing resilience, food security, and long-term sustainability. The number of crops (species) adopted at farm level is assessed using a scale from: 1: only one crop, 2: two to three crops, 3: more than three crops.

Likewise, the number of varieties per crop is assessed as follows: 1: one variety per crop, 2: two varieties per crop, 3: three or more varieties per crop.

This dual approach, combining qualitative self-assessment with quantitative diversity indicators, ensures that the provisioning dimension of ecosystem services is captured in a way that is both farmer-led and ecologically meaningful. The full system of assessment for provisioning ESs is presented in Table 1 .

The reliance on perception-based indicators for assessing provisioning ecosystem services reflects the importance of farmer knowledge in agroecological systems. This approach acknowledges that yield satisfaction is context-dependent, influenced by local conditions, goals, and resource availability. It offers an inclusive entry point for farm-level assessment, especially where quantitative yield data may be lacking. Moreover, the choice to adopt perception-based indicators was also intentional in order to keep the APES tool accessible, and not overly complex to apply for farmers and facilitators, therefore enhancing its usability in diverse real-world contexts.

The set of sixteen agroecological practice indicators used to assess the provisioning of regulating and supporting ecosystem services in the APES framework was developed through an extensive literature review and synthesis of existing methodologies. These indicators reflect practices that are widely recognized for their potential to enhance key agroecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling, soil fertility, biodiversity, and climate regulation.

The selection of practices draws heavily on the OASIS system (Original Agroecological Survey Indicator System) proposed by Peeters et al (Peeters et al., 2021), which offers a simple yet comprehensive methodology for assessing agroecological transition at farm level. The OASIS framework served as a conceptual starting point for structuring the indicators and aligning them with internationally recognized categories of ecosystem services.

Further refinement was informed by foundational reviews on agroecological practices. For instance, Wezel et al. (2014) provided an extensive typology of practices - including crop diversification, agroforestry, green manures, and biological pest control - that have been shown to contribute to sustainable agriculture. Their work highlights how these practices operate synergistically to support regulating and supporting ESs, such as soil health and pest regulation. Similarly, Nicholls and Altieri (2018) emphasized the role of agroecological strategies in amplifying ecological functions at the landscape scale, reinforcing the importance of context-specific implementation.

The indicators also build on comparative analyses of agroecological and organic farming regulations by Migliorini and Wezel (2017), which identified convergences and divergences in practice-based standards and their implications for environmental outcomes. These insights were key to shaping the scope of the indicators used in the APES framework, ensuring they are both ecologically grounded and practically applicable across different farming systems.

Each of the sixteen indicators is applied at the farm level, where it is scored based on the degree to which the corresponding practice is implemented. This scoring system was developed from the literature and adapted to reflect observable gradients of adoption, ranging from non-implementation to full integration within a system-level agroecological design. The resulting scores serve as proxies for the expected contribution of each practice to specific ecosystem services, allowing for a structured and transparent evaluation of service delivery at farm scale.

The Indicators for assessing Regulating and Supporting Ecosystem Services, their relative descriptions and the scoring thresholds are displayed in Tables 2 and 3 .

To evaluate regulating and supporting ecosystem services (ESs) within the APES framework, each ES is assigned a score that reflects the degree to which relevant agroecological practices are implemented on the farm. Specifically, the score for each service is calculated as the average of the individual scores assigned to all practices identified as contributing to that service. This method ensures that the assessment captures the cumulative effect of multiple farming practices on the provision of a given ES, acknowledging the synergistic nature of agroecological systems. Therefore, all agroecological practices are assumed to contribute equally to each associated ecosystem service. This equal-weighting approach was chosen to ensure transparency and facilitate ease of use in participatory and farm-level contexts. However, it is important to acknowledge that in practice, the magnitude and relevance of each practice’s contribution to a given ecosystem service may vary depending on environmental conditions, implementation intensity, and interactions with other practices. Future versions of the framework could explore differentiated weighting schemes based on empirical data, expert judgment, or modeling approaches to better reflect the relative importance of each practice. Such refinements would enhance the analytical power of the tool while maintaining its usability for farmers, advisors, and policymakers. Methods for participatory workshops and farmer surveys should be described in greater detail to enable replication.

To establish robust and meaningful links between practices and ecosystem services, an extensive literature review was carried out. This review identified evidence-based associations between specific agroecological practices and the ESs they are known to support. The resulting matrix defines which practices contribute to which services, allowing for a transparent and consistent scoring process grounded in scientific and applied knowledge.

The outcome of this matching process, linking each of the sixteen agroecological practice indicators to the relevant regulating and supporting ESs, is visually presented in Figure 2 , which forms the basis for calculating service-level scores in the APES framework. The detailed references and evidence used to justify the associations between agroecological practices and the ecosystem services they support are provided in Table 4 , which displays the specific literature underpinning the matching process.

The APES framework was implemented starting in July 2022 to evaluate ecosystem services through farm-level agroecological practices. As an illustrative example, we present here the results from one case study carried out during the development phase of the framework. This example is intended solely for demonstrative purposes, to show how the APES tool can be practically applied to assess ecosystem services.

The selected case study involved a group of livestock farms located in Northern Italy, primarily focused on forage-based dairy production. These farms are characterized by diversified meadow systems, which include the integration of leguminous forage crops. This diversification not only supports feed autonomy but also contributes to soil health, biodiversity, and overall ecosystem service provision. As such, the case study provides a relevant and practical example to demonstrate the functionality and applicability of the APES tool in a real-world farming context.

The results ( Figure 3 ) highlight that the selected case study provides high levels of provisioning ESs in relation to food and feed production.

Food-animal products and feed and fodder both reached the maximum score (3), indicating that farmers are highly satisfied with the productivity and yield of these components. This reflects the strong focus of these livestock farms on dairy and forage production, particularly for high-value products like Parmigiano Reggiano.

In terms of genetic resources, the farms scored moderately: species diversity received a score of 2, suggesting that at least three different crop or livestock species are being cultivated or raised, which contributes to system resilience and feed autonomy. However, varietal diversity was rated lower (score 1), pointing to the use of only one variety per crop. This highlights an area where there is potential to expand genetic diversity, for example by introducing more varieties of alfalfa or other forage crops.

The farms did not report contributions to other provisioning services such as fibers and raw materials, cosmetics and medicines, timber, or energy, all of which received a score of 0. This is consistent with their specialized production model.

In Table 5 , we report the scores assigned to each practice indicator, based on the data collected in the field.

The case study displays a generally good level of adoption of agroecological practices across several key areas.

Crop rotation and intercropping received with a high score (2), indicating the implementation of diverse crop sequences and mixed cropping systems with use of leguminouse crops These practices are known to support nitrogen fixation, improve soil fertility, and reduce nutrient emissions.

Cover crops, water management practices, and sustainable animal manure management also scored 2, suggesting consistent efforts to maintain soil cover, conserve water, and recycle nutrients through well-timed and locally applied manure composting.

On the other hand, certain practices such as ecological infrastructure, agroforestry, wind protection, and fire protection received a score of 0, indicating that these areas are either not implemented or largely underutilized. These represent potential areas for future improvement to enhance landscape connectivity and climate resilience. Practices such as use of local breeds, on-farm forage production, and organic pest control achieved a high score (2), reflecting strong integration of agroecological principles in the livestock system - particularly in relation to feeding strategies and low-input animal health management. However, conservation tillage and biodiversity management at the landscape level showed limited implementation, with scores of 0 and 1 respectively, suggesting space for improvements in developing soil structure, improving carbon sequestration and enhancing habitat complexity. Figure 4 then shows the aggregated results, representing the final scores attributed to each ecosystem service evaluated in this case study.

The results of the regulating and supporting ecosystem services assessment reflect a moderate level of overall performance, with a mean score of 0.93 across all ecosystem services. Notable observations include: The highest-performing ecosystem services are nitrogen fixation (1.4), carbon sequestration (1.2), and reduction of carbon and nitrogen emissions (both 1.2), which align with the good adoption of practices like cover crops, crop rotation, and appropriate manure management. Soil fertility, pest and disease control, and nutrient cycling show medium-level scores (around 1.1 – 1.2), indicating functional but improvable contributions from farm practices. Climate regulation, wind protection, and fire protection received very low or zero scores (0.33 and 0 respectively), highlighting a lack of practices that contribute directly to climate resilience - such as agroforestry or shelterbelts. Pollination, water management, and biodiversity each scored 1.0 or slightly above, suggesting that while some supporting practices are in place, there’s space to enhance landscape complexity and ecological infrastructure to better sustain these services.

The APES framework represents a valuable opportunity to support farmers and other agri-food system stakeholders in making visible the ecosystem services delivered by their management decisions. Rather than assessing outcomes in isolation, the framework focuses on the practices implemented at farm level, offering a practical and accessible entry point for understanding and enhancing agroecosystem performance. By channeling scientific knowledge into a tool that can be co-used and co-adapted by farmers, researchers, and advisors, APES contributes to building a shared language and methodology around ecosystem services that is grounded in lived farming realities (Rodríguez-Ortega et al., 2014; Boeraeve et al., 2020).

One of the key strengths of the APES framework is its ability to capture the synergistic nature of agroecological practices. Ecosystem services are rarely the result of single interventions; instead, they emerge from the combination and interaction of multiple practices embedded within a holistic farming strategy (Wezel et al., 2014; Nicholls and Altieri, 2018). For example, the integration of organic fertilization, cover cropping, and crop diversification not only supports soil fertility and nutrient cycling but also strengthens resilience to pests and climatic variability (Schipanski et al., 2014; Mabhaudhi et al., 2022). APES allows users to trace these connections between practices and ecological functions, reinforcing the idea that ecosystem service delivery is cumulative, relational, and context-specific. In this way, APES not only informs assessments and planning but also supports agroecological transition pathways, helping to align day-to-day farming practices with broader sustainability and policy goals. As the framework continues to evolve, its ability to empower users with actionable, farm-level insights will be critical for fostering resilient, multifunctional, and ecologically grounded food systems (Temesgen and Wu, 2018; Soulé et al., 2023).

While in the introduction we acknowledged common critiques of the ecosystem services framework, particularly its anthropocentric orientation and tendency to simplify complex ecological and social dynamics, it is important to revisit these issues in light of the APES methodology. By grounding the assessment of ecosystem services in concrete agroecological practices, the APES framework seeks to enhance an ecological understanding of agricultural systems. The practice-based indicators offer a more operational and accessible entry point for farmers and advisors, potentially democratizing knowledge and supporting decision-making rooted in daily agricultural management. However, this same pragmatism may risk reinforcing instrumental views of nature if not accompanied by broader reflection on values, meanings, and long-term systemic approaches. Moreover, the focus on regulating and supporting services still privileges those functions that are more easily linked to agronomic outcomes. To mitigate this, future iterations of APES could explore ways to integrate more nuanced dimensions, such as cultural values, traditional knowledge, and non-material benefits, without compromising usability. This balance remains an ongoing issue, but APES represents a step toward reconciling scientific rigor with contextual relevance in the assessment of ecosystem services.

Agroecological transition and agroecological food system transformations are very complex paths. Different strategy options (Röös et al., 2022) and key entry points (Wezel et al., 2020) domains and principles (Billen et al., 2024) have been identified: responsible governance, circular and solidarity economy, diversity, and co-creation and sharing of knowledge, relationship building and inclusivity.

APES through agroecological practices identification, helps to support multifunctional agricultural systems, which consider ecological relationships, resource recycling, and biodiversity management.

While APES demonstrates strong potential for informing sustainability assessments and agri-environmental monitoring schemes, it should currently be understood as a prototype tool. Its application to a single illustrative case study highlights its practical relevance and usability, but broader validation across farming systems, regions, is needed to assess its generalizability and scalability.

The perception-based indicators for assessing provisioning Ess are inherently subjective and may be influenced by biases or limited comparability across farms and regions. To address this, future versions of the APES framework could complement perception-based indicators with more objective measures, such as yield data, nutrient content, or resource-use efficiency, when available.

Moreover, socio-cultural ecosystem services were excluded from the current version of the APES framework due to the inherent complexity in capturing these dimensions through standardized and broadly applicable indicators. While for some practices, such as agroforestry maintained in traditional landscapes, the link to socio-cultural values is well documented, for many others the connection is far more nuanced, context-dependent, and difficult to generalize. This made it challenging to develop evidence-based indicators that could be applied across diverse farming systems without oversimplifying or misrepresenting these impacts.