Farm eco-efficiency: Can sustainable intensification make the difference?

Meike Weltin and Silke Hüttel

No 10 (2019), FORLand Working Papers from Humboldt University Berlin, DFG Research Unit 2569 FORLand "Agricultural Land Markets – Efficiency and Regulation"

Abstract: Sustainable intensification measures promise ecological improvements of farming while maintaining profitability. That is, farms should be able to produce at a higher ecological efficiency without losses in economic efficiency. Based on a theoretical framework, we investigate this promise empirically by analysing the environmental improvement potential of sustainable intensification. We thereby focus on quantifying biodiversity gains using a directional meta-frontier approach and farm survey data from the northern German Plain. We compare eco-efficiency scores in an ecological direction between adopters and matched non-adopters to identify the causal relationship between these gains and sustainable intensification. We find that adopters determine the system frontier. Despite higher mean eco-efficiency scores, most adopters do not yet fully exploit the potential of ecological improvements through sustainable intensification.

Keywords: environmental sustainability; eco-efficiency; directional data envelopment analysis; matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q12 Q15 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:forlwp:102019

DOI: 10.18452/20221

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