Farming sustainability is primordial to longterm
socioeconomic development. This study assesses rice
farming sustainability in Bangladesh by developing a
composite indicator (CI) under the four pillars of sustainability
and examines the main determining factors. The
assemblage of top-down and bottom-up approaches were
applied to generate an essential set of indicators and data
were collected through a household survey from 15 villages
of three major rice growing ecosystems. The results
revealed that less than half of the rice growers were sustainable
in terms of economical viability, ecological benefits,
and quality of life. By category, Boro rice farming
was found to be the most sustainable, followed by Aman
and Aus rice farming. Human capital development,
increasing land productivity, use of resource conserving
practices and technologies, and information availability
and accessibility were the main factors promoting rice
farming sustainability. The findings indicated that the
construction of CI by employing several methodologies
such as normalisation provide straightforward and clear-cut
policy inputs. The major policy implications that emerged
from the findings of the study are outlined to actualise rice
farming sustainability, which contributes to sustainable
development in Bangladesh.