This literature review analyses the use of multi-criteria assessment (MCA) in food-based systems in order to assess sustainability. MCA is an umbrella term for methods and tools that can be used when different
indicators/criteria need to be incorporated in an analysis. Scoring and weighting can be used in MCAs to compare indicators with different units of measurement (Dean, 2022).
12 articles are reviewed, and they show different approaches to the MCA methodology. The studies use MCA to meet political goals/regulations, increasing resilience of farming systems, and/or for methodological development. The indicators assessed and the use of weighting differ between the studies. Furthermore, the methodological choices of an MCA and the use of software tools is assessed.
To conclude, there are several different ways of applying MCA in a study, and the methodology shows great flexibility in order to be fitted to the subject of study and the involved stakeholders. The weakness of MCA is that the methodology can be viewed as arbitrary, especially when applying weighting. Therefore, it is important to be transparent with regards to the methodolog
